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THE  DRAMA  OF 
THREE  HUNDRED  k 
SIXTY-FIVE  DAYS 


SECOND  EDITION 


By  the  Same  Author 

THE  WOMAN 
THOU  GAVEST  ME 

HALL  CAINE'S 

Greatest  Novel 


THE  DRAMA  OF 
THREE  HUNDRED  & 
SIXTY-FIVE   DAYS 

SCENES  IN  THE  GREAT  WAR 


BY 

HALL  CAINE 

AUTKOB  OF  "the  'WOMAN  THOU  GAVEST  ME, 
"the  eternal  CITT,"  ETC. 


PHILADELPHIA  AND  LONDON 

J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 

1915 


COPTBIOHT,   I915,   BY  J.  B.  lilPPINCOTT  COMPANY 


PUBLISHXO  SBPTBMBBB,   191$ 


PBINTED  BY  J.   B.   LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 

AT  THE  WASHINGTON  SQUARE  PBESS 

PHILADELPHIA,  T7.  8.  A. 


DEDICATED 
TO 

THE  YOUNG  MANHOOD 

OF 

THE  BRITISH  EMPIRE 


CONTENTS 


FAQS 

The  Invisible  Conflict 9 

Keng  Edwakd's  Last  Visit  to  Beblut 11 

Pen-Portrait  of  the  Kaiser 14 

Pen-Portrait  of  the  Crown  Princb 19 

Some  Salutary  Lessons 22 

Pen-Portrait  of  the  Archduke  Ferdinand 24 

One  or  the   Oldest,  Feeblest,  and  Least  Capable 

OF  Men 27 

"  Good  God,  Man,  Do  You  Mean  to  Sat  ..." SO 

A  Gerkan  High  Priest  of  Peace 31 

"Wb  Shall  Never  Massacre  Belgian  Women" 33 

The  Old  German  Adam 36 

A  Conversation  with  Lord  Roberts 40 

"We'll  Fight  and  Fight  Soon " 42 

'*He  Knows,  Doesn't  He  ?  " 44 

We  Believed  It 46 

The  Falling  of  the  Thunderbolt 4^ 

The  Part  Chance  Plated 52 

"Why  Isn't  the  House  Cheering  ?  " 65 

The  Night  of  Our  Ultimatum 57 

The  Thunderstroke  of  Fate 59 

The  Morning  After 62 

"Your  King  and  Country  Need  You" 64 

The  Part  Played  by  the  British  Navy 67 

The  Part  Played  by  Belgium 69 

What  King  Albert  Did  for  Kingship 72 

"Why  Shouldn't  They,  Since  They  Were  English- 
men ? " 76 

"  But  Liberty  Must  Go  On,  and  .  .  .  England  " 79 

The  Part  Played  by  France 82 

The  Soul  of  France 84 

7 


CONTENTS 

The  Motherhood  op  France 86 

FrvE  Months   After 88 

The  Coming  of  Winter 91 

Christmas  in  the  Trenches 95 

The  Coming  of  Spring 98 

Natdre  Goes  Her  Own  Wat 101 

The  Soul  of  the  Man  W^ho  Sank  the  Lusitania 103 

The  German  Toweb  op  Babel 105 

The  Alien  Peril 108 

Hymns  of  Hate Ill 

The  Part  Plated  bt  Russia 114 

The  Shadow  of  the  Great  Death 116 

The  Russian  Soul 118 

The  Russian  Moujik  Mobilizing 120 

How  the  Russians  make  War 122 

The  Part  Plated   by  Poland 126 

A  Province  Without  a  Soul 128 

The  Soul  of  Poland 131 

The  Old  Soldier  op  Liberty 135 

The  Part  Plated  bt  Italt 138 

How  THE  War  Entered  Italt 141 

The  Italian  Soul 144 

The  Part  Plated  bt  the  Neutral  Nations 147 

The  Part  Plated  bt  the  United  States 150 

The  Thunderclap  That  Fell  on  England 153 

Great  Scenes  in  Great  Britain 154 

A  Glimpse  of  the  King's  Son 157 

The  Part  Plated  bt  Woman 161 

The  Word  of   Woman 162 

The  New  Scarlet  Letter 167 

And  .  .  .  After  ? 168 

War's  Spiritual  Compensations 171 

Let  Ua  Prat  Fob  Victort 173 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

THE  INVISIBLE  CONFLICT 

Me.  Maeterlinck  has  lately  propounded 
the  theory  *  that  what  we  call  the  war  is 
neither  more  nor  less  than  the  visible  ex- 
pression of  a  vast  invisible  conflict.  The 
unseen  forces  of  good  and  evil  in  the  uni- 
verse are  using  man  as  a  means  of  conten- 
tion. On  the  result  of  the  struggle  the 
destiny  of  humanity  on  this  planet  depends. 
Is  the  Angel  to  prevail?  Or  is  the  Beast 
to  prolong  his  malignant  existence?  The 
issue  hangs  on  Fate,  which  does  not,  how- 
ever, deny  the  exercise  of  the  will  of  man. 
Mystical  and  even  fantastic  as  the  theory 
may  seem  to  be,  there  is  no  resisting  its 
appeal.  A  glance  back  over  the  events  of 
the  past  year  leaves  us  again  and  again 
without  clue  to  cause  and  effect.  It  is 
impossible  to  account  for  so  many  things 

*  TJie  Daily  Chronicle. 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

that  have  happened.  We  cannot  always 
say, "  We  did  this  because  of  that,"  or  "  Our 
enemies  did  that  because  of  the  other." 
Time  after  time  we  can  find  no  reason  why 
things  happened  as  they  have — so  unac- 
countable and  so  contradictory  have  they 
seemed  to  be.  The  dark  work  wrought  by 
Death  during  the  past  year  has  been  done 
in  the  blackness  of  a  night  in  which  none 
can  read.  Hence  some  of  us  are  forced  to 
yield  to  Mr.  Maeterlinck's  theory,  which 
is,  I  think,  the  theory  of  the  ancients — the 
theory  on  which  the  Greeks  built  their 
plays — ^that  invisible  powers  of  good  and 
evil,  operating  in  regions  that  are  above 
and  beyond  man's  control,  are  working  out 
his  destiny  in  this  monstrous  drama  of  the 
war. 

And  what  a  drama  it  has  been  already  1 
We  had  witnessed  only  365  days  of  it  down 
to  August  4,  1915,  corresponding  at  the 
utmost  to  perhaps  three  of  its  tragic  acts, 
but  what  scenes,  what  emotions!  Mr. 
10 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

Lowell  used  to  say  that  to  read  Carlyle's 
book  on  the  French  Revolution  was  to  see 
history  as  by  flashes  of  hghtning.  It  is 
only  as  by  flashes  of  lightning  that  we  can 
yet  hope  to  see  the  world-drama  of  1914-15. 
Figures,  groups,  incidents,  episodes,  with- 
out the  connecting  links  of  plots,  and  just 
as  they  have  been  thrown  off*  by  Time,  the 
master-producer — ^what  a  spectacle  they 
make,  what  a  medley  of  motives,  what  a 
confused  jumble  of  sincerities  and  hypoc- 
risies, heroisms  and  brutalities,  villainies 
and  virtues! 

KING  EDWARD'S  LAST  VISIT  TO  BERLIN 

As  happens  in  every  drama,  a  great  deal 
of  the  tragic  mischief  had  occurred  before 
the  curtain  rose.  Always  before  the  pas- 
sage of  war  over  the  world  there  comes  the 
far-off*  murmur  of  its  approaching  wings. 
Each  of  us  in  this  case  had  heard  it,  dis- 
tinctly or  indistinctly,  according  to  the  ac- 
cidents of  personal  experience.  I  think  I 
11 


THE  DRA^IA  OF  365  DAYS 

myself  heard  it  for  the  first  time  clearly 
when  in  the  closing  year  of  King  Edward's 
reign  I  came  to  know  (it  is  mmecessary  to 
say  how)  what  our  Sovereign's  feeling  had 
been  about  his  last  visit  to  Berlin.  It  can 
do  no  harm  now  to  say  that  it  had  been  a 
feeling  of  intense  anxiety.  The  visit 
seemed  necessary,  even  imperative,  there- 
fore the  King  would  not  shirk  his  duty. 
But  for  his  country,  as  well  as  for  himself, 
he  had  feared  for  his  reception  in  Ger- 
many, and  on  his  arrival  in  Berlin,  and 
during  his  di'ive  from  the  railway  station 
with  the  Kaiser,  he  had  watched  and  lis- 
tened to  the  demonstrations  in  the  streets 
with  an  emotion  which  very  nearly 
amounted  to  dread. 

The  result  had  brought  a  certain  relief. 
With  the  best  of  all  possible  intentions, 
the  newspapers  in  both  capitals  had  re- 
ported that  King  Edward's  reception  had 
been  enthusiastic.  It  hadn't  been  that — 
at  least,  it  hadn't  seemed  to  be  that  to  the 

12 


THE  DRA]MA  OF  365  DAYS 

persons  chiefly  concerned.  But  it  had  been 
just  cordial  enough  not  to  be  chiUing,  just 
warm  enough  to  carry  things  off,  to  drown 
that  far-off  murmur  of  war  which  was  Hke 
the  approach  of  a  mighty  wind.  Then, 
during  the  next  days,  there  had  been  the 
usual  banqueting,  with  the  customary 
toasting  to  the  amity  of  the  two  great  na- 
tions, whose  interests  were  so  closely  united 
by  bonds  of  peace!  And  then  the  return 
drive  to  the  railway  station,  the  clatter  of 
horsemen  in  shining  armour,  the  adieux, 
the  throbbing  of  the  engine,  the  starting 
of  the  train,  and  then.  ..."  Thank  God, 
it's  over!"  If  the  invisible  powers  had 
really  been  struggling  over  the  destiny  of 
men,  how  the  evil  half  of  them  must  have 
shrieked  with  dehght  that  day  as  the  Kaiser 
rode  back  to  Potsdam  and  our  King  re- 
turned to  London! 


13 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

PEN-PORTRAIT  OF  THE  KAISER 

Other  whisperings  there  were  of  the  storm 
that  was  so  soon  to  burst  on  the  world.  In 
the  ominous  silence  there  were  rumours  of 
a  certain  change  that  was  coming  over  the 
spirit  of  the  Kaiser.  For  long  years  he 
had  been  credited  with  a  sincere  love  of 
peace,  and  a  ceaseless  desire  to  restrain 
the  forces  about  him  that  were  making  for 
war.  Although  constantly  occupied  with 
the  making  of  a  big  army,  and  inspiring  it 
with  great  ideals,  he  was  thought  to  have 
as  little  desire  for  actual  warfare  as  his 
ancestor,  Frederick  William,  had  shown, 
while  gathering  up  his  giant  guardsmen 
and  refusing  to  allow  them  to  fight.  Par- 
ticularly it  was  believed  in  Berlin  (not  alto- 
gether graciously)  that  his  affection  for, 
and  even  fear  of  his  grandmother,  Queen 
Victoria,  would  compel  him  to  exhaust  all 
efforts  to  preserve  peace  in  the  event  of 
trouble  with  Great  Britain.  But  Victoria 
u 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

was  dead,  and  King  Edward  might  per- 
haps be  smiled  at — behind  his  back — and 
then  a  yomiger  generation  was  knocking  at 
the  Kaiser's  door  in  the  person  of  his  eldest 
son,  who  represented  forces  which  he  might 
not  long  be  able  to  hold  in  check.  How 
would  he  act  now? 

Thousands  of  persons  in  this  country  had 
countless  opportunities  before  the  war  of 
forming  an  estimate  of  the  Kaiser's  char- 
acter. I  had  only  one,  and  it  was  not  of 
the  best.  For  years  the  English  traveller 
abroad  felt  as  if  he  were  always  following 
in  the  track  of  a  grandiose  personality  who 
was  playing  on  the  scene  of  the  world  as 
on  a  stage,  fond  as  an  actor  of  dressing  up 
in  fine  uniforms,  of  making  pictures,  scenes, 
and  impressions,  and  leaving  his  visible 
mark  behind  him — as  in  the  case  of  the 
huge  gap  in  the  thick  walls  of  Jerusalem, 
torn  down  (it  was  said  with  his  consent) 
to  let  his  equipage  pass  through. 

In  Rome  I  saw  a  man  who  was  a  true 
15 


THE  DRAjVIA  of  365  DAYS 

son  of  his  ancestors.  Never  had  the  laws 
of  heredity  better  justified  themselves. 
Frederick  William,  Frederick  the  Great, 
William  the  First — the  HohenzoUerns 
were  all  there.  The  glittering  eyes,  the 
withered  arm,  the  featm'es  that  gave  signs 
of  frightful  periodical  pain,  the  immense 
energy,  the  gigantic  egotism,  the  ravenous 
vanity,  the  fanaticism  amounting  to  frenzy, 
the  dominating  power,  the  dictatorial  tem- 
per, the  indifference  to  suffering  (whether 
his  own  or  other  people's),  the  overbear- 
ing suppression  of  opposing  opinions,  the 
determination  to  control  everybody's  in- 
terest, everybody's  work — I  thought  all  this 
was  written  in  the  Kaiser's  masterful  face. 
Then  came  stories.  One  of  my  friends 
in  Rome  was  an  American  doctor  who  had 
been  called  to  attend  a  lady  of  the  Em- 
peror's household.  "  Well,  doctor,  what's 
she  suffering  from?  "  said  the  Kaiser.  The 
doctor  told  him.  "  Nothing  of  the  kind — 
you're  entirely    wrong.      She's    suffering 

16 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

from  so  and  so,"  said  the  Majesty  of  Ger- 
many, stamping  up  and  down  the  room. 
At  length  the  American  doctor  lost  control. 
"  Sir,"  he  said,  "  in  my  coimtry  we  have  a 
saying  that  one  bad  practitioner  is  worth 
twenty  good  amateurs — ^you're  the  ama- 
teur." The  doctor  lived  through  it.  Fred- 
erick William  would  have  dragged  him  to 
the  window  and  tried  to  fling  him  out  of 
it.  William  II  put  his  arm  round  the  doc- 
tor's shoulder  and  said,  "  I  didn't  mean  to 
hurt  you,  old  fellow.  Let  us  sit  down  and 
talk." 

A  soldier  came  with  another  story.  After 
a  sham  fight  conducted  by  the  Kaiser  the 
generals  of  the  German  army  had  been  sum- 
moned to  say  what  they  thought  of  the 
Royal  manoeuvres.  All  had  formed  an 
unfavourable  opinion,  yet  one  after  an- 
other, with  some  insincere  compliment,  had 
wriggled  out  of  the  difficulty  of  candid 
criticism.  But  at  length  came  an  officer, 
who  said: 

17 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

"  Sir,  if  it  had  been  real  warfare  to-day 
there  wouldn't  be  enough  wood  in  Germany 
to  make  coffins  for  the  men  who  would  be 
dead." 

The  general  lived  through  it,  too — at  first 
in  a  certain  disfavour,  but  afterwards  in 
recovered  honour. 

Such  was  the  Kaiser,  who  a  year  ago 
had  to  meet  the  mighty  wind  of  War.  He 
was  in  Norway  for  his  usual  surmner  holi- 
day in  July  1914  when  affairs  were  reach- 
ing their  crisis.  Rumour  has  it  that  he 
was  not  satisfied  with  the  measure  of  the 
information  that  was  reaching  him,  there- 
fore he  returned  to  Berlin,  somewhat  to 
the  discomfiture  of  his  ministers,  intending, 
it  is  said,  for  various  reasons  (not  neces- 
sarily humanitarian)  to  stop  or  at  least 
postpone  the  war.  If  so,  he  arrived  too 
late.  He  was  told  that  matters  had  gone 
too  far.  They  must  go  on  now.  "Very 
well,  if  they  must,  they  must,"  he  is  re- 
ported to  have  said.  And  there  is  the  f  amil- 
18 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

iar  story  that  after  he  had  signed  his  narae 
on  the  first  of  August  to  the  document  that 
plunged  Europe  into  the  conflict  that  has 
since  shaken  it  to  its  foundations,  he  flung 
down  his  pen  and  cried,  "  You'll  live  to 
regret  this,  gentlemen." 

PEN-PORTRAIT  OF  THE  CROWN  PRINCE 

And  then  the  Crown  Prince.  In  August 
of  last  year  nine  out  of  every  ten  of  us 
would  have  said  that  not  the  father,  but 
the  son,  of  the  Royal  family  of  Germany 
had  been  the  chief  provocative  cause  of  the 
war.  Subsequent  events  have  lessened  the 
weight  of  that  opinion.  But  the  young 
man's  known  popularity  among  an  active 
section  of  the  officers  of  the  army;  their 
subterranean  schemes  to  set  him  off*  against 
his  father;  a  vague  suspicion  of  the  Kaiser's 
jealousy  of  his  eldest  son — aU  these  facts 
and  shadows  of  facts  give  colour  to  the  im- 
pression that  not  least  among  the  forces 
which  led  the  Emperor  on  that  fateful  first 

19 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

of  August  to  declare  war  against  Russia 
was  the  presence  and  the  importunity  of 
the  Crown  Prince.  What  kind  of  man  was 
it,  then,  whom  the  invisible  powers  of  evil 
were  employing  to  precipitate  this  insen- 
sate struggle? 

Hundreds  of  persons  in  England, 
France,  Russia,  and  Italy  must  have  met 
the  Crown  Prince  of  Germany  at  more  or 
less  close  quarters,  and  formed  their  own 
estimates  of  his  character.  The  barbed- 
wire  fence  of  protective  ceremony  which 
usually  surroimds  Royal  personages,  con- 
ceahng  their  little  human  foibles,  was  peri- 
odically broken  down  in  the  case  of  the 
Heir- Apparent  to  the  German  Throne  by 
his  incursion  every  winter  into  a  small  cos- 
mopolitan community  which  repaired  to  the 
snows  of  the  Engadine  for  health  or  pleas- 
iu*e.  In  that  stark  environment  I  myself, 
in  conmion  with  many  others,  saw  the  de- 
scendant of  the  Fredericks  every  day,  for 
several  weeks  of  several  years,  at  a  distance 

20 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

that  called  for  no  intellectual  field-glasses. 
And  now  I  venture  to  say,  for  whatever  it 
may  be  worth,  that  the  result  was  an  en- 
tirely unfavourable  impression. 

I  saw  a  young  man  without  a  particle 
of  natural  distinction,  whether  physical, 
moral,  or  mental.  The  figure,  long  rather 
than  tall;  the  hatchet  face,  the  selfish  eyes, 
the  meaningless  mouth,  the  retreating  fore- 
head, the  vanishing  chin,  the  energy  that 
expressed  itself  merely  in  restless  move- 
ment, achieving  little,  and  often  aiming  at 
nothing  at  all;  the  uncultivated  intellect, 
the  narrow  views  of  hf e  and  the  world ;  the 
morbid  craving  for  change,  for  excitement 
of  any  sort;  the  indifference  to  other 
people's  feelings,  the  shockingly  bad  man- 
ners, the  assumption  of  a  right  to  disre- 
gard and  even  to  outrage  the  common 
conventions  on  which  social  intercourse  de- 
pends— all  this  was,  so  far  as  my  observa- 
tion enabled  me  to  judge,  only  too  plainly 
apparent  in  the  person  of  the  Crown  Prince. 

21 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

Outside  the  narrow  group  that  gathered 
about  him  (a  group  hailing,  ironically 
enough,  from  the  land  of  a  great  Republic) 
I  cannot  remember  to  have  heard  in  any- 
winter  one  really  warm  word  about  him, 
one  story  of  an  act  of  kindness,  or  even 
generous  condescension,  such  as  it  is  easy 
for  a  royal  personage  to  perform.  On  the 
contrary,  I  was  constantly  hearing  tales 
of  silly  fooleries,  of  overbearing  behaviour, 
of  dehberate  rudeness,  such  as  irresistibly 
recalled,  in  spirit  if  not  in  form,  the  con- 
duct of  the  common  barrator  in  the  guise 
of  a  king,  who,  if  Macaulay's  stories  are 
to  be  credited,  used  to  kick  a  lady  in  the 
open  streets  and  tell  her  to  go  home  and 
mind  her  brats. 

SOME  SALUTARY  LESSONS 

Only  it  was  not  Prussia  we  were  living 
in,  and  it  was  not  the  year  1720,  so  the  air 
tingled  occasionally  with  other  tales  of 
little  salutary  lessons  administered  to  our 
22 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

Royal  upstart  on  his  style  of  pursuing  the 
pleasures  considered  suitable  to  a  Prince. 
One  day  it  was  told  of  him  that,  having 
given  a  cup  to  be  raced  for  on  the  Bob-run, 
he  was  wroth  to  find  on  the  notice-board 
of  entries  the  names  of  a  team  of  highly 
respectable  httle  Englishmen  who  are 
familiar  on  the  racecourse ;  and,  taking  out 
his  pencil-case,  he  scored  them  off,  saying, 
"  My  cup  is  for  gentlemen,  not  jockeys," 
whereupon  a  young  English  soldier  stand- 
ing by  had  said:  "  We're  not  jockeys  here, 
sir,  and  we're  not  princes;  we  are  only 
sportsmen." 

I  cannot  vouch  for  that  story,  but  I  can 
certainly  say  that,  after  a  particularly  fla- 
grant and  deHberate  act  of  rudeness,  imper- 
illing the  safety  of  several  persons  in  the 
village  street,  the  Crown  Prince  of  Ger- 
many was  told  to  his  foohsh  face  by  an 
Englishman,  who  need  not  be  named,  that 
he  was  a  fool,  and  a  damned  fool,  and  de- 
served to  be  kicked  off  the  road. 
23 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

And  this  is  the  mindless,  but  mischiev- 
ous, person,  the  ridiculous  buccaneer,  bom 
out  of  his  century,  who  was  permitted  to 
interfere  in  the  destinies  of  Europe ;  to  help 
to  determine  the  fate  of  tens  of  miUions  of 
men  on  the  battlefields,  and  the  welfare 
of  hundreds  of  millions  of  women  and  chil- 
dren in  their  homes.  What  wild  revel  the 
invisible  powers  of  evil  must  have  held  in 
Berlin  on  that  night  of  August  1,  1914, 
after  the  Kaiser  had  thrown  down  his  pen  I 

PEN-PORTRAIT  OF  THE  ARCHDUKE 
FERDINAND 

Then  the  Archduke  Ferdinand  of  Austro- 
Hungary,  whose  assassination  was  the  os- 
tensible cause  of  this  devastating  war — 
what  kind  of  man  was  he?  Quite  a  differ- 
ent person  from  the  Crown  Prince,  and  yet, 
so  far  as  I  could  judge,  just  as  little  worthy 
of  the  appalling  sacrifice  of  human  life 
which  his  death  has  occasioned. 

Not  long  before  his  tragic  end  I  spent  a 
24 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

month  under  the  same  roof  with  him,  and 
though  the  house  was  only  an  hotel,  it  was 
situated  in  a  remote  place,  and  though  I 
was  not  in  any  sense  of  the  Archduke's 
party,  I  walked  and  talked  frequently  with 
most  of  the  members  of  it,  and  so,  with  the 
added  help  of  daily  observation,  came  to 
certain  conclusions  about  the  character  of 
the  principal  personage. 

A  middle-aged  man,  stiff -set,  heavy- 
jawed,  with  a  strong  step,  and  a  short  man- 
ner; obviously  proud,  reserved,  silent, 
slightly  imperious,  self-centred,  self-opin- 
ionated, well-educated  in  the  kind  of  knowl- 
edge all  such  men  must  possess,  but  narrow 
in  intellect,  retrograde  in  sympathy,  a  stick- 
ler for  social  conventions,  an  almost  un- 
yielding upholder  of  royal  rights,  preroga- 
tives, customs,  and  usages  (although  by  his 
own  marriage  he  had  violated  one  of  the 
first  of  the  laws  of  his  class,  and  by  his  un- 
failing fidelity  to  his  wife  continued  to 
resist   it),   superstitious   rather  than   re- 

25 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

ligious,  an  immense  admirer  of  the  Kaiser, 
and  a  decidedly  hostile  critic  of  our  own 
comitry — such  was  the  general  impression 
made  on  one  British  observer  by  the  Arch- 
duke Ferdinand. 

The  man  is  dead ;  he  took  no  part  in  the 
war,  except  unwittingly  by  the  act  of  dying, 
and  therefore  one  could  wish  to  speak  of 
him  with  respect  and  restraint.  Otherwise 
it  might  be  possible  to  justify  this  estimate 
of  his  character  by  the  narration  of  little 
incidents,  and  one  such,  though  trivial  in 
itself,  may  perhaps  bear  description.  The 
younger  guests  of  the  hotel  in  the  moun- 
tains had  got  up  a  fancy  dress  ball,  and 
among  persons  clad  in  all  conceivable  cos- 
tumes, including  those  of  monks,  cardinals, 
and  even  popes,  a  lady  of  demure  manners, 
who  did  not  dance,  had  come  downstairs  in 
the  habit  of  a  nun.  This  aroused  the  super- 
stitious indignation  of  the  Archduke,  who 

demanded  that  the  lady  should  retire  from 
26 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

the  room  instantly,  or  he  would  order  his 
carriage  and  leave  the  hotel  at  once. 

Of  course,  the  inevitable  happened — ^the 
Archduke's  will  became  law,  and  the  lady 
went  upstairs  in  tears,  while  I  and  two  or 
three  others  (Catholics  among  us)  thought 
and  said,  "  Heaven  help  Em-ope  when  the 
time  comes  for  its  destinies  to  depend 
largely  on  the  judgment  of  a  man  whose  be- 
muddled  intellect  cannot  distinguish  be- 
tween morality  of  the  real  world  and  of  an 
entirely  fantastic  and  fictitious  one." 

ONE  OF  THE  OLDEST,  FEEBLEST,  AND 
LEAST  CAPABLE  OF  MEN 

That  time,  as  we  now  know,  never  came, 
but  a  still  more  fatal  time  did  come — ^the 
cruel,  ironical,  and  sinister  time  of  July  28, 
1914,  when  one  of  the  oldest,  feeblest,  and 
least  capable  of  living  men,  the  Emperor  of 
Austria,  under  the  pretence  of  avenging  the 
death  of  the  heir-presumptive  to  his  throne, 
signed  with  his  trembling  hand,  which 
27 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

could  scarcely  hold  the  pen,  the  first  of  his 
many  proclamations  of  war,  and  so  touched 
the  button  of  the  monstrous  engine  that  set 
Europe  aflame. 

The  Archduke  Ferdinand  was  foully 
done  to  death  in  discharging  a  patriotic 
duty,  but  to  think  that  the  penalty  imposed 
on  the  world  for  the  assassination  of  a  man 
of  his  caUbre  and  capacity  for  usefulness 
(or  yet  for  the  violation  of  the  principles  of 
pubhc  safety,  thereby  involved)  has  been 
the  murdering  of  millions  of  men  of  many 
nationalities,  the  destruction  of  an  entire 
kingdom,  the  burning  of  historic  cities,  the 
impoverishment  of  the  rich  and  the  starva- 
tion of  the  poor,  the  outraging  of  women 
and  the  slaughter  of  children,  is  also  to 
think  that  for  the  past  365  days  the  desti- 
nies of  humanity  have  been  controlled  by 
demons,  who  must  be  shrieking  with  laugh- 
ter at  the  stupidities  of  mankind. 

Thank  God,  we  are  not  required  to  think 
anything  quite  so  foolish,  although  we  can- 

28 


THE  DRAMA  OF  865  DAYS 

not  escape  from  a  conclusion  almost  equally 
degrading.  Victor  Hugo  used  to  say  that 
only  kings  desired  war,  and  that  with  the 
celebration  of  the  United  States  of  Europe 
we  should  see  the  beginning  of  the  golden 
age  of  Peace.  But  the  events  of  the  tremen- 
dous days  from  July  28  to  August  4,  1914, 
show  us  with  humiliating  distinctness  that 
though  Kaisers,  Emperors,  Crown  Princes, 
and  Archdukes  may  be  the  accidental  in- 
struments of  invisible  powers  in  plunging 
humanity  into  seas  of  blood,  a  war  is  no 
sooner  declared  by  any  of  them,  however 
feeble  or  fatuous,  than  all  the  nations  con- 
cerned make  it  their  own.  That  was  what 
happened  in  Central  Europe  the  moment 
Austria  declared  war  on  Serbia,  and  the 
history  of  man  on  this  planet  has  no  record 
of  anything  more  pitiful  than  the  spectacle 
of  Germany — "  sincere,  calm,  deep-think- 
ing Germany,"  as  Carlyle  called  her,  whose 
triumph  in  1870  was  "the  hopefullest  fact " 
of  his  time — stifling  her  conscience  in  order 
to  justify  her  participation  in  the  conflict. 
29 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

"  GOOD  GOD,  MAN,  DO  YOU  MEAN  TO 
SAY  ...» 

"We  have  tried  in  vain  to  localize  the  just 
vengeance  of  our  Austrian  neighbour  for 
an  abominable  royal  murder,"  said  the  Ger- 
mans, knowing  well  that  the  royal  murder 
was  nothing  but  a  shameless  pretext  for  an 
opportunity  to  test  their  strength  against 
the  French,  and  give  law  to  the  rest  of 
Europe. 

"  Let  us  pass  over  your  territory  in  order 
to  attack  our  enemy  in  the  West,  and  we 
promise  to  respect  your  independence  and 
to  recompense  you  for  any  loss  you  may 
possibly  sustain,"  said  Germany  to  Bel- 
gium, without  a  thought  of  the  monstrous 
crime  of  treachery  which  she  was  asking 
Belgium  to  commit  against  France. 

"  Stand  aside  in  a  benevolent  neutrality, 

and  we  undertake  not  to  take  any  of  the 

possessions   of   France   in  Europe,"   said 

Germany  to  Great  Britain,  without  allow- 

30 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

ing  herself  to  be  troubled  by  so  much  as  a 
qualm  about  the  iniquity  of  asking  us 
to  trade  with  her  in  the  French  colonies. 
And  when  we  rejected  Germany's  in- 
famous proposals,  and  called  on  her  to  say 
if  she  meant  to  respect  the  independence  of 
Belgium,  whose  integrity  we  had  mutually 
pledged  ourselves  to  protect,  her  Chancel- 
lor stamped  and  fumed  at  our  representa- 
tive, and  said,  "  Good  God,  man,  do  you 
mean  to  say  that  your  country  will  go  to 
war  for  a  scrap  of  paper?  " 

A  GERMAN  HIGH  PRIEST  OF  PEACE 

Nor  did  the  theologians,  publicists,  and 
authors  of  Germany  show  a  more  sensitive 
conscience  than  her  statesmen.  One  of  the 
theologians  was  Adolf  Harnack,  professor 
of  Church  History  in  Berlin  and  intimate 
acquaintance  of  the  Kaiser.  Not  long  be- 
fore the  war  he  published  a  book  entitled 
"  What  is  Christianity?  "  which  began  with 
the  words,  "  John  Stuart  Mill  used  to  say 
31 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

humanity  could  not  be  too  often  reminded 
that  there  was  once  a  man  named  Socrates. 
That  is  true,  but  still  more  important  it  is 
to  remind  mankind  that  a  man  of  the  name 
of  Jesus  Christ  once  lived  among  them." 
On  this  text  the  book  proceeded  to  enforce 
the  practical  application  of  Christ's  teach- 
ing to  the  modem  world,  and  particularly 
to  propound  his  doctrine  of  the  wickedness 
and  futility  of  violence,  which  led  the 
author  to  the  conclusion  that  it  was  "  not 
necessary  for  justice  to  use  force  in  order 
to  remain  justice.'* 

Somewhat  later  Professor  Hamack 
came  to  this  country  to  attend,  if  I  remem- 
ber rightly,  a  World  Missionary  Confer- 
ence at  Edinburgh,  and  the  memory  of  him 
which  abides  in  our  northern  capital  is  that 
of  a  high  priest  and  prophet  of  the  new 
golden  age  that  was  dawning  on  the  world 
— ^the  age  of  universal  brotherhood  and 
peace.  But  no  sooner  had  war  come  within 
the  zone  of  Germany  than  this  man  signed 
32 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

(if  he  did  not  write)  a  manifesto  of  Ger- 
man theologians  which  told  "  evangelical 
Christians  abroad"  that  the  German 
"  sword  was  bright  and  keen,"  that  Ger- 
many was  taking  up  arms  to  establish  the 
justice  of  her  cause  and  that  ever  through 
the  storm  aAd  horror  of  the  coming  con- 
flict the  German  people,  with  a  calm  con- 
science, would  kneel  and  pray: 
"  Hallowed  be  Thy  name. 

Thy  kingdom  come. 

Thy  will  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is  in 
Heaven." 

«  WE  SHALL  NEVER  MASSACRE 
BELGLA.N  WOMEN" 

One  of  the  writers  who  performed  the  same 
kind  of  moral  somersault  was  Gerhart 
Hauptmann,  author  of  a  Sociahst  drama 
called  "  The  Weavers,"  and,  rumour  says, 
protege  (what  frightful  irony!)  of  the 
Crown  Prince.  Hauptmann  knew  well 
(none  better)  that  a  vast  proportion  of 
33 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

the  human  family  live  perpetually  on  the 
borderland  of  want,  and  that  of  all  who 
suffer  by  war  the  poor  suffer  most.  Yet 
he  wrote  (and  a  degenerate  son  of  the 
great  Norwegian  liberator,  Bjornsen,  pub- 
lished) a  letter,  in  which,  after  telling  the 
poor  of  his  people  that  "  heaven  alone 
knew "  why  their  enemies  were  assailing 
them,  he  called  on  them  (in  effect)  to 
avenge  unnameable  atrocities,  which  he 
alleged,  without  a  particle  of  proof,  had 
been  committed  on  innocent  Germans  living 
abroad,  and  then  said,  in  allusion  to  Mr. 
Maeterlinck,  "  I  can  assure  him  that, 
although  'barbarous  Germans,'  we  shall 
never  be  so  cowardly  as  to  massacre  or 
martyr  the  Belgian  women  and  children." 
This  was  written  in  August  1914,  at  the 
very  hour,  as  the  world  now  knows,  when 
the  German  soldiers  in  Liege  were  shooting, 
bayoneting,  and  burning  alive  old  men  and 

little  children,  raping  nuns  in  their  con- 
34 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

vents  and  young  girls  in  the  open  streets. 
But  the  invisible  powers  of  evil  have  no 
mercy  on  their  instruments  after  they  have 
worked  their  will,  and  Time  has  turned 
them  into  objects  of  contempt. 

'Not  were  the  German  people  themselves, 
any  more  than  their  master-spirits  and 
spokesmen,  spared  the  shame  of  their 
duplicity  in  those  early  days  of  August 
1914.  A  large  group  of  them,  including 
commercial  and  professional  men,  drew  up 
a  long  address  to  the  neutral  countries,  in 
which  they  said  that  down  to  the  eleventh 
hour  they  had  "  never  dreamt  of  war," 
never  thought  of  depriving  other  nations 
of  light  and  air  or  of  thrusting  anybody 
from  his  place.  And  yet  the  ink  of  their 
protest  was  not  yet  dry  when  they  gave 
themselves  the  lie  by  showing  that  down  to 
the  last  detail  of  preparation  they  had 
everything  ready  for  the  forthcoming 
struggle. 

35 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

Englishmen  who  were  in  Berlin  and 
Cologne  on  July  31,  and  August  1  (before 
any  of  the  nations  had  declared  war  on 
Germany),  could  see  what  was  happening, 
though  no  telegrams  or  newspapers  had 
yet  made  known  the  news.  A  tingling 
atmosphere  of  joyous  expectation  in  the 
streets ;  the  cafes  and  beer-gardens  crowded 
with  civilians  in  soldiers'  uniforms ;  orches- 
tras striking  up  patriotic  anthems;  excited 
groups  singing  "Deutschland  iiber  Alles," 
or  rising  to  their  feet  and  jingling  glasses; 
then  the  lights  put  out,  and  a  general  rush 
made  for  the  railway  stations — everybody 
equipped,  and  knowing  his  duty  and  his 
destination. 

THE  OLD  GERMAN  ADAM 

It  was  the  old  historic  story  of  Grcrman 
duplicity,  and  the  nations  of  Europe  had 
no  excuse  for  being  surprised.  When  the 
Prussian  Monarchy  was  first  bestowed  on 
the  relatively  humble  family  of  the  Hohen- 

86 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

zollems,  they  found  their  territory  for  the 
most  part  sterile,  the  soil  round  Berlin  and 
about  Potsdam — the  favourite  residence  of 
the  Margraves — a  sandy  desert  that  could 
scarcely  be  made  to  yield  a  crop  of  rye  or 
oats,  so  they  set  themselves  to  enlarge  and 
enrich  it  by  help  of  an  army  out  of  all 
proportion  to  the  size  and  importance  of 
their  States.  The  results  were  inevitable. 
When  war  becomes  the  trade  of  a  separate 
class  it  is  natural  that  they  should  wish  to 
pursue  it  at  the  first  favourable  oppor- 
tunity of  conquest.  That  opportunity  came 
to  Prussia  when  Charles  VI  died  and  the 
Archduchess  Maria  Theresa  succeeded  to 
her  father  by  virtue  of  a  law  (the  Prag- 
matic Sanction),  to  which  all  the  Powers 
of  Europe  had  subscribed.  Frederick  had 
subscribed  to  it.  But,  nevertheless,  in  the 
name  of  Prussia,  without  any  proper  ex- 
cuse or  even  decent  pretext,  he  took  posses- 
sion of  Silesia,  thereby  robbing  the  ally 
whom  he  had  bound  himself  to  defend,  and 
87 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

committing  the  same  great  crime  of  violat- 
ing his  pledged  word,  which  Germany  has 
now  committed  against  Belgimn. 

But  there  was  one  difference  between 
the  outrages  of  1740  and  1914.  The  great 
barrator  made  no  hypocritical  pretence  of 
desiring  peace.  "  Ambition,  interest,  the 
desire  of  making  people  talk  about  me  car- 
ried the  day,  and  I  decided  for  war,"  he 
said.  It  was  reserved  for  Hamack  and 
Hauptmann,  not  to  speak  of  the  Kaiser, 
to  cant  about  the  responsibilities  of  "  Kul- 
tur"  (that  harlot  of  the  German  diction- 
ary, debased  by  all  ignoble  uses),  about  the 
hastening  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  and 
about  the  German  sword  being  sanctified 
by  God.  But  the  old  German  Adam  re- 
mained, and  when,  two  days  before  the 
declaration  of  war  with  France,  the  Ger- 
man soldiers  were  flying  to  the  Belgian 
frontier  there  was  no  thought  of  the  Arch- 
duke Ferdinand  or  of  the  doddering  old 
man  on  the  Austrian  throne,  whose  paternal 

88 


THE  DRAMA  OF  865  DAYS 

heart  had  been  sorely  wounded.  Germany 
was  out  to  rob  France  of  her  colonies — to 
rob  her,  and  the  Germans  knew  it. 

**  A  few  centuries  may  have  to  run  their 
course,"  said  their  own  poet  Goethe  (who 
surely  knew  the  German  soul) ,  "  before  it 
can  be  said  of  the  German  people,  *  It  is  a 
long  time  since  they  were  barbarians.*  " 

Such,  then,  were  some  of  the  events  in 
the  great  drama  of  the  war  which  took 
place  in  Germany  before  the  rising  of  the 
curtain.  Not  a  theologian,  a  philosopher, 
an  historian,  or  a  poet  to  recall  the  past 
of  his  country,  to  warn  it  not  to  repeat  the 
crime  of  a  century  and  a  half  before,  which 
had  stained  its  name  for  ever  before  the 
tribunals  of  man  and  God;  not  a  statesman 
to  remind  a  generation  that  was  too  young 
to  remember  1870  of  the  miseries  and  hor- 
rors of  war,  for  (alas  for  the  welfare  of  the 
world!)  the  one  great  German  voice  that 
could  have  done  so  with  searching  and 
scorching  eloquence  (the  voice  of  Bebel) 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

had  only  just  been  silenced  by  the  grave. 
And  so  it  came  to  pass  that  Germany,  in  the 
last  days  of  July  1914,  presented  the  piti- 
ful spectacle  of  a  great  nation  being  lured 
on  to  its  moral  death-agony  amid  canting 
appeals  to  the  Almighty,  and  wild  out- 
bursts of  popular  joy. 

A  CONVERSATION  WITH  LORD  ROBERTS 

Meantime  what  had  been  happening 
among  om'selves?  The  far-off  murmur  of 
the  approaching  wind  had  been  heard  by 
all  of  us,  but  as  none  can  hope  to  describe 
the  effect  on  the  whole  Empire,  perhaps 
each  may  be  allowed  to  indicate  the 
character  of  the  warning  as  it  came  to  his 
own  ears.  It  was  at  Naples,  not  long  after 
the  event,  that  I  heard  how  the  late  King 
had  felt  about  his  last  visit  to  Berlin.  I 
was  then  on  my  way  home  from  Egypt, 
where  I  had  spent  some  days  at  Mena, 
while  Lord  Roberts  was  staying  there  on 
his  way  back  from  the  Soudan.    He  seemed 

40 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

restless  and  anxious.  On  two  successive 
mornings  I  sat  with  him  for  a  long  hour  in 
the  shade  of  the  terraces  which  overlook  the 
Pyramids  discussing  the  *'  German  dan- 
ger." After  the  great  soldier  had  left  for 
Cairo  he  wrote  asking  me  to  regard  our 
conversations  as  confidential;  and  down  to 
this  moment  I  have  always  done  so,  but  I 
see  no  harm  now  (quite  the  reverse  of 
harm)  in  repeating  the  substance  of  what 
he  said  so  many  years  ago  on  a  matter  of 
such  infinite  momentousness. 

"  Do  you  really  attach  importance  to 
this  scare  of  a  German  invasion?  "  I  asked. 

"  I'm  afraid  I  do,"  said  Lord  Roberts. 

*'  You  think  an  enemy  army  could  be 
landed  on  our  shores?  " 

"As  things  are  now,  yes,  I  think  it 
could." 

"  Do  you  think  you  could  land  an  army 
on  the  East  Coast  of  England  and  march 
on  to  London? " 

"  Yes,  I  do." 

41 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

"  In  a  thick  fog,  of  course?  " 
"  Without  a  fog,"  said  Lord  Roberts. 
After  that  he  described  in  detail  the 
measiu-es  we  ought  to  take  to  make  such 
an  attack  impossible  and  I  hasten  to  add 
that,  so  far  as  I  can  see  and  know,  the 
precautionary  measures  he  recommended 
have  all  been  taken  since  the  outbreak  of 
the  war. 

"WE'LL  FIGHT  AND  FIGHT  SOON" 

By  that  time  I  had,  in  common  with  the 
majority  of  my  countrymen  who  travelled 
much  abroad,  been  compelled  to  recognize 
the  ever-increasing  hostility  of  the  German 
and  British  peoples  whenever  they  encoun- 
tered each  other  on  the  highways  of  the 
world — ^their  constant  cross-purposes  on 
steamships,  in  railway  trains,  hotels, 
casinos,  post  and  telegraph  offices — ^making 
social  intercourse  difficult  and  friendship 
impossible.     The  overbearing  manners  of 

many  German  travellers,  their  aggressive 
42 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

and  domineering  selfishness,  which  always 
demanded  the  best  seats,  the  best  rooms, 
and  the  first  attention,  was  year  by  year 
becoming  more  and  more  intolerable  to  the 
British  spirit.  It  cannot  be  said  that  we 
acquiesced.  Indeed,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  our  country-people  usually  met  the 
Gkrman  claims  to  be  the  supermen  of 
Europe  with  rather  unnecessary  self- 
assertion.  If  an  unmannerly  German 
pushed  before  us  at  the  counter  of  a  book- 
ing-office we  pushed  him  back ;  if  he  shouted 
over  our  shoulders  at  a  telegraph  office  we 
told  him  to  hold  his  tongue;  and  if,  in 
stiflingly  hot  weather,  he  insisted  (as  he 
often  did)  on  shutting  up  again  and  again 
the  window  of  a  railway  carriage  after  we 
had  opened  it  for  a  breath  of  air,  we  some- 
tunes  drove  our  elbow  through  the  glass  for 
final  answer — as  I  saw  an  English  barrister 
do  one  choking  day  on  the  journey  between 
Jaffa  and  Jerusalem. 

These  were  only  the  straws  that  told  how 
43 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

the  wind  blew,  but  they  were  disquieting 
symptoms  nevertheless  to  such  of  us  as 
felt,  with  Professor  Harnack  and  his  col- 
leagues at  the  Edinburgh  Conference,  that 
by  blood,  history,  and  faith  the  German 
and  British  peoples  were  brothers  (ugly 
as  it  sovmds  to  say  so  now),  each  more 
closely  bound  to  the  other  in  the  world- 
task  of  civilization  than  with  almost  any 
other  nation. 

"  If  we  are  brothers  we'll  fight  all  the 
more  fiercely  for  that  fact,"  we  thought, 
"  and,  God  help  us,  we'll  fight  soon." 

"  HE  KNOWS,  DOESN'T  HE  ?  " 

I  WAS  staying  in  a  neutral  country  at  an 
hotel  much  frequented  by  the  German  gov- 
erning classes  when  an  English  newspaper 
proprietor,  after  a  visit  to  Berlin,  pub- 
lished in  his  most  popular  jom*nal  a  map 
of  a  portion  of  Northern  Europe  in  order 
to  show  at  sight  his  view  of  the  extent  of 
the  forthcoming  German  aggression.  The 
u 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

paper  was  lying  open  between  a  group  of 
gentlemen  whose  names  bave  since  become 
prominent  in  relation  to  the  war  when  I 
stepped  up  to  the  table.  The  men  were 
obviously  angry,  although  laughing  im- 
moderately. "  Look  at  that,"  said  one  of 
them,  pointing  to  the  map  and  running 
his  finger  down  the  coast  of  Holland  and 
Belgium  and  France  to  Calais.  "He 
knows,  doesn't  he? " 

And  then,  after  a  general  burst  of  de- 
risive laughter,  came  a  bitter  attack  on 
British  joumahsm  ("  The  scaremongering 
of  that  paper  is  doing  more  than  anything 
in  the  world  to  make  war  between  Germany 
and  England"),  a  still  fiercer  and  more 
bitter  assault  on  our  Lords  of  the  Ad- 
miralty, who  had  lately  proposed  a  year's 
truce  in  the  building  of  battleships  ("  Tell 
your  Mr.  Churchill  to  mind  his  own  busi- 
ness, and  we'll  mind  ours  "),  and,  finally, 
a  passionate  protest  that  Germany's  object 
in  increasing  her  navy  was  not  to  en- 
45 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

large  her  empire,  but  merely  to  keep  the 
seas  open  to  her  trade.  "  Why,"  said  one 
of  the  men,  "  nine-tenths  of  my  own  busi- 
ness is  with  London,  and  if  England  could 
shut  up  our  ships  I  should  be  a  ruined  man 
in  a  month."  "  Quite  so,"  said  another, 
"  and  so  far  as  German  people  go  that's  the 
beginning  and  end  of  the  whole  matter," 

WE  BELIEVED  IT 

We  believed  it.  I  am  compelled  to  coimt 
myself  among  the  number  of  my  country- 
men who  through  many  years  believed  that 
story — that  the  accident  of  Germany's  dis- 
advantageous geographical  position,  not 
her  desire  to  break  British  supremacy  on 
the  sea,  made  it  necessary  for  her  to  en- 
large her  navy.  I  did  my  best  to  believe 
it  when  I  had  to  sail  through  the  Kiel 
Canal  in  a  steamer  from  Lubeck  to  Copen- 
hagen, which  was  forced  to  shoulder  her 
way  through  an  ever-increasing  swarm  of 

German  battleships.    I  did  my  best  to  be- 
46 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

lieve  it  when  I  had  to  sail  under  the  threat- 
ening fortresses  of  Hehgoland  which  stood 
anchored  out  at  the  mouth  of  the  Bight  like 
a  mastiff  at  the  end  of  his  chain  snarling 
at  the  sea.  I  did  my  best  to  believe  it  when 
I  had  to  travel  to  Cologne  by  night,  and 
the  darkened  railway  carriages  were  lit  up 
by  fierce  flashes  from  gigantic  furnaces 
which  were  making  moimtains  of  munitions 
for  the  evil  day  when  frail  man  would 
have  to  face  the  murderous  slaughter  of 
machine-guns.  I  did  my  best  to  believe  it 
even  in  Berlin  when  German  friends  of  the 
scholastic  classes  accounted  for  their  toler- 
ance of  conscription  and  of  the  tyranny  of 
clanking  soldiery  in  the  streets,  the  cafes, 
and  the  hotels  on  the  ground  of  dis- 
ciplinary usefulness  rather  than  military 
necessity. 

And  then  there  was  the  human  charm 
of  some  German  homes  to  soothe  away  sus- 
picion— the  scholar's  quiet  house  (beyond 

the  clattering  parade-ground  at  Potsdam) 
47 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

where  we  clinked  glasses  and  drank  "  to 
all  good  friends  in  England,"  and  the  sweet 
simplicity  of  the  little  town  in  Westphalia, 
with  its  green  fields  and  its  sweetly-flowing 
river,  where  the  nightingale  sang  all  night 
long,  and  where,  in  the  midst  of  musical 
societies,  Goethe  Societies  and  Shake- 
speare Societies,  it  was  so  difficult  to  think 
of  Germany  as  a  nation  dreaming  only  of 
world-power  and  dominion.  Even  yet  it 
strikes  a  chill  to  the  heart  to  recall  those 
German  homes  as  scenes  of  prolonged 
duplicity.  I  prefer  not  to  do  so.  Blit  all 
the  same  I  see  now  that  the  wings  of  war 
were  already  approaching  them,  and  that 
the  German  people  heard  their  far-off"  mur- 
mur long  before  ourselves — ^heard  it  and 
told  us  nothing,  perhaps  much  less  and 
worse  than  nothing. 


48 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

THE  FALLING  OF  THE  THUNDERBOLT 
Into  such  an  unpromising  atmosphere 
of  national  hostihty  the  war  came  down 
on  us,  in  July  1914,  like  a  thunderbolt. 
In  spite  of  grave  warnings  few  or  none 
in  this  country  were  at  that  moment  giving 
a  thought  to  it.  On  the  contrary,  we  were 
thinking  of  all  manner  of  immeasurably 
smaller  things,  for  Great  Britain,  although 
governing  more  than  one-fifth  of  the  habi- 
table globe,  has  an  extraordinary  capacity 
for  becoming  absorbed  in  the  affairs  of  its 
two  little  islands.  It  was  so  in  the  autumn 
of  1914,  when  we  thought  Home  Rule  and 
Land  Reform  covered  all  our  horizon, 
although  a  thunder-cloud  that  was  to  silence 
these  big  little  guns  had  already  gathered 
in  the  sky. 

Perhaps  it  was  not  altogether  our  fault 
if  secret  diplomacy  had  too  long  concealed 
from  us  the  storm  that  was  so  soon  to 
break.    That  kind  of  surprise  must  never 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

come  to  us  again.  Many  and  obvious  may 
be  the  dangers  of  allowing  the  public  to 
participate  in  delicate  and  difficult  nego- 
tiations between  nations,  but  if  democracy 
has  any  rights  surely  the  chief  of  them  is  to 
know  step  by  step  by  what  means  its  repre- 
sentatives are  controlling  its  destiny.  We 
did  not  hear  what  was  happening  in  the 
Cabinets  of  Europe,  under  that  miserable 
disguise  of  the  Archduke's  assassination, 
until  the  closing  days  of  July.  Conse- 
quently, we  reeled  under  the  danger  that 
threatened  us,  and  were  not  at  first  capable 
of  comprehending  the  cause  and  the  meas- 
ure of  it. 

"  What  is  this  wretched  conspiracy  in 
Serbia  to  us,  and  why  in  God's  name  should 
we  have  to  fight  about  it? "  we  thought. 
Or  perhaps,  "  We've  always  been  told  that 
treaties  between  nations  are  safeguards  of 
peace,  but  here,  heaven  help  us,  they  are 
dragging  us  into  war." 
fiO 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

So  general  was  this  sentiment  of  revolt 
during  the  last  tragic  days  that  it  is  com- 
monly miderstood  to  have  extended  to  the 
Cabinet.  Six  members  are  said  to  have 
opposed  war.  One  of  them,  a  philosopher 
and  historian  of  high  distinction,  could  not 
see  his  way  with  his  colleagues,  and  retired 
from  their  company.  Another,  who  came 
from  the  working-classes,  is  understood  to 
have  resigned  from  thought  of  the  suffer- 
ings which  any  war,  however  justifiable, 
must  inevitably  inflict  upon  the  poor.  A 
third,  a  lawyer  in  a  position  of  the  utmost 
authority,  is  believed  to  have  had  grave 
misgivings  about  our  legal  right  to  call 
Germany  to  account.  And  I  have  heard 
that  a  fourth,  who  had  been  prominent  as 
a  pacifist  in  the  days  of  an  earlier  conflict, 
had  written  a  letter  to  a  colleague  as  late  as 
the  evening  of  August  1,  saying  that  a  war 
declared  merely  on  grounds  of  problemati- 
cal self-interest  would  create  such  an  out- 
cry in  Great  Britain  as  had  never  been 
61 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

heard  here  before — ^leaving  us  a  divided 
and,  therefore,  easily- vanquished  people. 

THE  PART  CHANCE  PLAYED 
But  chance  plays  the  largest  part  in  the 
drama  of  life,  and  accident  often  confounds 
the  plans  of  men.  Not  feeling  entirely 
sure  of  his  letter  the  pacifist  Minister  put 
it  in  his  pocket  when  he  dressed  that  night 
to  go  out  to  dinner.  And  when  he  sat 
down  at  table  he  found  himself  seated  next 
to  the  able,  earnest,  and  passionately  patri- 
otic Minister  for  Belgium.  Perhaps  he  was 
urging  some  objections  to  British  inter- 
vention, when  his  neighbour  said:  "But 
what  about  Belgium?  You  have  promised 
to  protect  her,  and  if  you  don't  do  so  she 
will  be  destroyed." 

That  raised  visions  of  the  work  of  the 
little  nations;  memories  of  their  immense 
contributions  to  human  progress  from  the 
days  of  Israel  downwards ;  thoughts  of  the 

vast  loss  to  liberty,  to  morality,  to  religion, 
62 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

and  to  all  the  other  fruits  of  the  unfettered 
soul  that  would  come  to  the  world  from  the 
over-riding  of  the  weak  peoples  by  the 
strong.  The  result  was  swift  and  sure — 
the  letter  in  the  Minister's  pocket  never 
reached  the  important  person  to  whom  it 
was  addressed. 

Only  God  knows  whether  this  period, 
however  short,  of  indecision  among  our 
people,  and  particularly  among  our  respon- 
sible statesmen,  with  the  consequent  delay 
in  dispatching  a  determined  warning  to 
Germany  ("  Hands  off  Belgium,")  con- 
tributed to  the  making  of  the  war.  But 
it  is  at  least  an  evidence  of  our  desire  for 
peace,  and  a  sufficient  assurance  that  if 
unseen  powers  were  working  on  our  side 
also,  they  were  the  powers  of  good.  Yet 
so  strangely  do  the  invisible  forces  con- 
found the  plans  of  men  that  the  crowning 
proof  of  this  came  two  days  laAer — on 
August  3,  in  the  Commons — ^when  our  For- 

53 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

eign  Minister  defined  the  British  position, 
and  practically  declared  for  war. 

It  is  not  idle  rumour  that  the  Government 
went  down  to  the  House  that  day  expecting 
to  be  resisted.  The  sequel  was  a  startling 
surprise.  Sir  Edward  Grey's  speech  was 
far  from  a  great  oration.  It  gave  the  efi^ect 
of  being  unprepared  as  to  form,  so  loosely 
did  the  vehicle  hang  together,  the  sentences 
sometimes  coming  with  strange  inexacti- 
tude for  the  tongue  of  one  whose  written 
word  in  dispatches  has  a  clarity  and  pre- 
cision that  have  never  been  excelled.  But 
it  had  the  supreme  qualities  of  manifest 
sincerity  and  transparent  honesty,  and  it 
derived  its  overwhelming  effect  from  one 
transcendent  characteristic  of  which  the 
speaker  himself  may  have  been  quite  un- 
conscious. It  spoke  to  the  British  Empire 
as  to  a  BWtish  gentleman.  "  You  can't 
stand  by  and  do  nothing  while  the  friend 
by  your  side  is  being  beaten  to  his  knees. 

You  can't  let  a  mischievous  and  unprinci- 
54 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

pled  buccaneer  tread  into  the  dust  the 
neighbour  whom  he  has  joined  with  you  in 
swearing  to  protect? "  There  was  no  re- 
sisting that.  Our  own  interest  might  leave 
us  cold;  we  might  even  be  sceptical  of  our 
danger.  But  we  were  put  on  our  honour, 
and  every  man  in  the  House  with  the  in- 
stincts of  a  gentleman  was  swept  away  by 
that  appeal  as  by  a  flood. 

«  WHY  ISN'T  THE  HOUSE  CHEERING  ?  " 

Then  came  our  Prime  Minister's  passion- 
ate, fiery,  yet  dignified  and  even  exalted 
denunciation  of  the  proposal  of  Germany 
that  we  should  trade  with  her  in  our  neu- 
trality by  committing  treachery  to  France 
and  Belgium — ("  To  accept  your  infamous 
offer  would  be  to  cover  the  glorious  name 
of  England  with  undying  shame")  ;  then 
the  announcement  of  the  ultimatum  sent  by 
Great  Britain  to  Germany  demanding  an 
assurance  that  the  neutrality  of  Belgium 

should  be  respected ;  and  finally  that  speech 

65 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

of  John  Redmond's,  which,  spoken  on  the 
very  top  of  the  crisis  that  had  threatened 
to  bring  a  fratricidal  war  into  Ireland,  has 
been,  perhaps,  the  most  thrilling  and  dra- 
matic utterance  yet  produced  by  the  war.  "  I 
tell  the  Government  they  may  take  every 
British  soldier  out  of  Ireland  to  meet  the 
enemy  of  the  Empire.  Ireland's  sons  will 
take  care  of  Ireland.  The  Catholics  of  the 
South  will  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder  with 
their  Protestant  fellow-countrymen  of  the 
North  to  fight  the  common  foe." 

It  was  another  appeal  to  the  gentlemen 
in  the  British  nation,  and  in  one  moment  it 
swept  the  bitter  waters  of  the  Home  Rule 
crisis  out  of  all  sight  and  memory.  I  have 
heard  a  Cabinet  Minister  say  that,  as  he 
listened  to  Redmond's  speech,  he  was  sur- 
prised at  the  silence  with  which  it  was  re- 
ceived. "  Why  isn't  the  House  cheering? " 
he  had  asked  himself.  But  all  at  once  he 
had  felt  his  eyes  swimming  and  his  throat 
tightening,  and  then  he  had  understood. 
56 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

THE  NIGHT  OF  OUR  ULTIMATUM 

Our  nation  knew  everything  now,  and 
had  made  her  choice,  yet  the  twelve  hours* 
interval  between  noon  and  midnight  of 
August  4  were  perhaps  the  gravest  mo- 
ments in  her  modern  history.  I  am  tempted, 
not  without  some  misgivings,  but  with  the 
confidence  of  a  good  intention,  to  trespass 
so  far  on  personal  information  as  to  lift  the 
curtain  on  a  private  scene  in  the  tremen- 
dous tragic  drama. 

The  place  is  a  room  in  the  Prime  Minis- 
ter's house  in  Downing  Street.  The  Prime 
Minister  himself  and  three  of  the  principal 
members  of  his  Cabinet  are  waiting  there 
for  the  reply  to  the  ultimatum  which  they 
sent  to  Germany  at  noon.  The  time  for 
the  reply  expires  at  midnight.  It  is  ap- 
proaching eleven  o'clock.  In  spite  of  her 
"infamous  proposal,"  the  Ministers  cannot 
even  yet  allow  themselves  to  believe  that 

Germany  will  break  her  pledged  word. 
67 


THE  DRAMA  OF  865  DAYS 

She  would  be  so  palpably  in  the  wrong.  It 
is  late  and  she  has  not  yet  replied,  but  she 
will  do  so — she  must.  There  is  more  than 
an  hour  left,  and  even  at  the  last  moment 
the  telephone  bell  may  ring  and  then  the 
reply  of  Germany,  as  handed  to  the  British 
Ambassador  in  Berlin,  will  have  reached 
London. 

It  is  a  calm  autumn  evening,  and  the 
windows  are  open  to  St.  James's  Park, 
which  lies  dark  and  silent  as  far  as  to  Buck- 
ingham Palace  in  the  distance.  The  streets 
of  London  round  about  the  official  resi- 
dence are  busy  enough  and  quivering  with 
excitement.  We  British  people  do  not  go 
in  solid  masses  surging  and  singing  down 
our  Corso,  or  light  candles  along  the  line  of 
our  boulevards.  But  nevertheless  all  hearts 
are  beating  high — ^in  our  theatres,  our  rail- 
way stations,  our  railway  trains,  our  shops, 
and  our  houses.     Everybody  is  thinking, 

"  By  twelve  o'clock  to-night  Germany  has 
68 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

got  to  say  whether  or  not  she  is  a  perjurer 
and  a  thief." 

Meanwhile,  in  the  sUent  room  overlook- 
ing the  park  time  passes  slowly.  In  spite 
of  the  righteousness  of  our  cause,  it  is  an 
awful  thing  to  plunge  a  great  empire  into 
war.  The  miseries  and  horrors  of  warfare 
rise  before  the  eyes  of  the  Ministers,  and 
the  sense  of  personal  responsibility  becomes 
almost  unsupportable.  Could  anything  be 
more  awful  than  to  have  to  ask  oneself 
some  day  in  the  future,  awakening  in  the 
middle  of  the  night  perhaps,  after  rivers  of 
blood  have  been  shed, "  Did  I  do  right  after 
all  ?  "  The  reply  to  the  ultimatum  has  not 
even  yet  arrived,  and  the  absence  of  a  reply 
is  equivalent  to  a  declaration  of  war. 

THE  THUNDERSTROKE  OF  FATE 

Suddenly  one  of  the  little  company  re- 
members something  which  everybody  has 
hitherto  forgotten — ^the  difference  of  an 
hour  between  the  time  in  London  and  the 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

time  in  Berlin.  Midnight  by  mid-European 
time  would  be  eleven  o'clock  in  London. 
Germany  would  naturally  understand  the 
demand  for  a  reply  by  midnight  to  mean 
midnight  in  the  country  of  dispatch. 
Therefore  at  eleven  o'clock  by  London 
time  the  period  for  the  reply  will  expire.  It 
is  now  approaching  eleven. 

As  the  clock  ticks  out  the  remaining  min- 
utes the  tension  becomes  terrible.  Talk 
slackens.  There  are  long  pauses.  The 
whole  burden  of  the  frightful  issues  in- 
volved for  Great  Britain,  France,  Belgium, 
Russia,  Germany — for  Europe,  for  the 
world,  for  civilization,  for  religion  itself, 
seems  to  be  gathered  up  in  these  last  few 
moments.  If  war  comes  now  it  will  be  the 
most  frightful  tragedy  the  world  has  ever 
witnessed.  Twenty  millions  of  dead  per- 
haps, and  civil  life  crippled  for  a  hundred 
years.  Which  is  it  to  be,  peace  or  war  ? 
Terrible  to  think  that  as  they  sit  there  the 

electric  wires  may  be  flashing  the  awful  tid- 
60 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

ings,  like  a  flying  angel  of  life  or  death, 
through  the  dark  air  all  over  Europe. 

The  four  men  are  waiting  for  the  bell 
of  the  telephone  to  ring.  It  does  not  ring, 
and  the  fingers  of  the  clock  are  moving.  The 
world  seems  to  be  on  tiptoe,  listening  for  a 
thunderstroke  of  Fate.  The  Ministers  at 
length  sit  silent,  rigid,  almost  petrified, 
looking  fixedly  at  floor  or  ceiling.  Then 
through  the  awful  stillness  of  the  room  and 
the  park  outside  comes  the  deep  boom  of 
"  Big  Ben."  Boom,  boom,  boom  !  No  one 
moves  until  the  last  of  the  eleven  strokes 
has  gone  reverberating  through  the  night. 
Then  comes  a  voice,  heavy  with  emotion, 
yet  firm  with  resolve,  "  It*s  war." 

When  the  clock  struck  again  (at  mid- 
night) Great  Britain  had  been  at  war  for 
an  hour  without  knowing  it. 

If  I  have  done  wrong  in  lifting  the  cur- 
tain on  this  private  scene,  I  ask  forgiveness 
for  the  sake  of  the  piu-pose  I  put  it  to — 
that  of  showing  that  it  was  not  in  haste,  not 

61 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

in  anger,  but  with  an  awful  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility to  Great  Britain  and  to  hu- 
manity that  our  responsible  Ministers  drew 
the  sword  of  our  country. 

THE  MORNING  AFTER 

If  Mr.  Maeterlinck's  theory  is  sound,  that 
this  war  is  the  visible  reflection  of  a  vast, 
invisible  conflict,  what  a  gigantic  battle  of 
the  unseen  forces  of  good  and  evil  must 
have  been  raging  throughout  the  universe 
when  Europe  rose  on  the  morning  of  Au- 
gust 5,  1914!  Think  what  had  happened. 
While  the  light  was  dawning,  the  sun  was 
rising,  and  the  birds  were  singing  over 
Europe,  the  greater  nations  were  prepar- 
ing to  turn  a  thousand  square  miles  of  it 
into  a  gigantic  slaughter-house.  After 
forty  years  of  unbroken  peace,  in  which 
civilization,  as  represented  by  law,  science, 
surgery,  medicine,  art,  music,  literature,  and 
above  all  religion,  in  their  ancient  and  cen- 
tral home,  had  been  striving  to  lift  up  man 
62 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

to  the  place  he  is  entitled  to  in  the  scheme 
of  creation,  war  had  suddenly  stepped  in 
to  drag  him  back  to  the  condition  of  the 
barbarian.  From  this  day  onward  he  was 
to  live  in  holes  in  the  gromid,  to  be  neces- 
sarily miclean,  inevitably  verminous,  and 
liable  to  loathsome  diseases.  Although 
hitherto  law-abiding,  and  perhaps  even 
pious,  with  an  ever-developing  sense  of  the 
value  and  sanctity  of  human  life,  he  was 
henceforward  to  take  joy  in  the  destruc- 
tion of  thousands  of  his  feEow-creatures 
by  devilish  machines  of  death,  and  not  to 
shrink  from  an  opportunity  of  thrusting 
his  bayonet  down  the  throat  of  his  enemy. 
He  was  to  set  fire  to  churches,  to  throw 
images  of  Christ  into  the  road,  and,  show- 
ing no  mercy  to  old  men  and  women  and 
children,  to  destroy  all  and  spare  none.  And 
why?  Ostensibly  because  one  quite  common- 
place Austrian  gentleman  had  been  foully 
murdered,  but  really  because  a  vain  and  am- 
bitious and  rapidly  increasing  nation,  liv- 
es 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

ing  on  an  arid  and  insufficient  soil,  had  come 
to  consider  themselves  the  master-spirits 
of  himianity,  and  therefore  entitled  to  pos- 
sess the  earth,  or  at  least  give  law  to  all 
other  nations. 

"  We  are  doing  wrong,  but  it  is  necessary 
to  do  wrong,  and  we  shall  make  amends  as 
soon  as  our  military  necessities  have  been 
served." 


"YOUR  KING  AND  COUNTRY  NEED  YOU" 

What  a  mockery!  What  a  waste!  What 
a  hideous  reversion!  What  a  confession  of 
blank  failure  on  the  part  of  civilization,  in- 
cluding morahty  and  religion!  But,  hap- 
pily, the  invisible  powers  of  evil  had  not  got 
it  all  their  own  way,  even  on  that  morn- 
ing of  August  5.  Out  of  the  very  shadow 
of  battle  great  things  were  already  being 
bom  among  the  children  of  men,  and  chief 
among  them  were  the  spirits  of  sacrifice 
and  brotherhood.     Even  the  cruel  loss  of 

64 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

nearly  all  that  makes  human  life  worth 
living — cleanliness  and  purity  and  exemp- 
tion from  foul  disease — could  be  borne  for 
the  defence  of  truth  and  freedom.  And 
then  it  was  worth  a  world  of  suffering  to 
realize  the  first-fruits  of  that  golden 
age  of  brotherhood  among  all  the  nations 
of  the  earth  (except  those  of  our  enemy) 
which  has  been  the  peace-dream  of  human- 
ity for  countless  centuries. 

We  in  Great  Britain  have  no  reason  to 
be  ashamed  of  how  our  country  answered 
the  call.  A  few  years  before  the  outbreak 
of  war  I  talked  about  conscription  with  a 
British  admiral  in  the  cabin  of  his  flagship. 
"  There's  not  the  slightest  necessity  for  it 
in  this  country,"  said  the  admiral.  The 
moment  war  was  declared  the  whole  nation 
would  rise  to  it.  A  great  thrill  would  pass 
over  our  people  from  end  to  end  of  the 
land,  and  we  should  have  milUons  flocking 
to  the  colours. 

The   old   sailor  proved  to  be  a  true 

65 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

prophet.  None  of  us  can  ever  forget  the 
spontaneous  response  in  August  1914  to  the 
cry,  "Your  King  and  country  need  you." 
To  such  as,  like  myself,  are  on  the  shadowed 
side  of  the  hill  of  life,  and  therefore  too 
old  for  service,  it  was  a  profoundly  mov- 
ing thing  to  see  how  swiftly  our  immense 
voluntary  army  sprang  (as  by  a  miracle) 
out  of  the  earth,  to  look  at  the  long  lines 
of  young  soldiers  passing  with  their  regular 
step  through  the  streets  of  London,  to  think 
of  the  situations  given  up,  of  the  young 
wives  and  little  children  living  at  home  on 
shortened  means,  and  of  the  risk  taken  of 
life  being  lost  just  when  it  is  most  precious 
and  most  sweet. 

What  was  the  motive  power  that  im- 
pelled the  young  manhood  of  Great  Britain 
to  this  tremendous  sacrifice?  The  thought 
of  our  country's  danger?  The  danger  to 
France?  The  danger  to  Belgium?  The 
fact  that  a  man  named  Palmerston  had 
pledged  his  solemn  word  for  them  long 
66 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

years  before  they  were  bom,  or  even  the 
mothers  who  bore  them  were  bom,  that 
they  would  go  to  their  deaths  rather  than 
allow  a  great  crime  to  be  committed  or 
England's  oath  be  broken?  I  don't  know. 
I  do  not  believe  anybody  knows.  But  I 
am  not  ashamed  of  my  tears  when  I  re- 
member it  all,  and  sure  I  am  that  in  those 
first  critical  days  of  the  war  the  invisible 
powers  of  justice  must  have  been  fighting 
on  our  side. 

THE  PART  FLAYED  BY  THE  BRITISH 

NAVY 

Perhaps  the  first  of  the  flashes  as  of  light- 
ning by  which  we  have  seen  the  drama  of 
the  past  365  days  is  that  which  shows  us  the 
part  played  by  the  British  Navy.  What  a 
part  it  has  been!  Do  we  even  yet  recog- 
nize its  importance?  Have  our  faithful  and 
loyal  Allies  a  full  sense  of  its  tremendous 
effect  on  the  fortunes  of  the  campaign? 
On  Simday,  August  2,  two  days  before  the 
67 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

dispatch  of  Great  Britain's  ultimatum  to 
Germany,  we  saw  thousands  of  our  naval 
reserve  flying  off  by  special  boats  and  trains 
to  their  ships  on  our  east  and  south  coasts. 
On  Monday,  August  3,  the  British  Navy 
had  taken  possession  of  the  North  Sea. 

It  was  a  legitimate  act  of  peace,  yet  never 
in  this  world  was  there  a  more  complete,  if 
bloodless,  victory.  The  great  German 
North  Sea  fleet,  which  (according  to  a  cal- 
culation) had  been  constructed  at  a  cost  of 
£300,000,000  sterling,  to  keep  open  the  seas 
of  the  world  to  German  trade;  the  fleet 
which  had,  in  oiu"  British  view,  been  built 
with  the  sole  purpose  of  menacing  British 
shores,  was  shut  up  in  one  day  within  the 
narrow  limits  of  its  own  waters! 

In  the  light  of  what  has  happened  since 
it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  if  the  British 
Fleet  had  taken  up  its  cue  only  forty-eight 
hours  later  the  north  coast  of  France  would 
have  been  bombarded,  every  town  on  our 
east  coast  from  Aberdeen  to  Dover  would 
68 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

have  been  destroyed,  and  Lord  Roberts's 
prophecy  of  German  mvasion  would  have 
been  fulfilled.  But,  thank  God,  the  watch- 
dogs of  the  British  Navy  were  there  to  pre- 
vent that  swift  surprise.  They  are  there 
(or  elsewhere)  still,  silently  riding  the  grey 
waters  in  all  seasons  and  all  weathers,  wait- 
ing and  watching  and  biding  their  time,  and 
meanwhile  (in  spite  of  the  occasional 
marauding  of  submarines,  the  offal  of 
fighting  craft)  keeping  the  oceans  free  to 
all  ships  except  those  of  our  enemies.  And 
now,  when  we  hear  it  said,  as  we  sometimes 
do,  that  Great  Britain  holds  only  thirty- 
five  miles  of  land  on  the  battle-front  in 
Flanders,  let  us  lift  our  heads  and  answer, 
"  Yes,  but  she  holds  thirty-five  thousand 
miles  of  sea." 

THE  PART  PLAYED  BY  BELGIUM 

One  of  the  earhest,  and  perhaps  one  of  the 
most  inspiring,  of  the  flashes  as  of  light- 
ning whereby  we  saw  the  drama  of  the  war 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

was  that  which  revealed  the  part  played  by 
Belgium.  Has  history  any  record  of  greater 
heroism  and  greater  suffering?  Such  cour- 
age for  the  right!  Such  strength  of  soul 
against  overwhelming  odds  and  the  crim- 
inal suddenness  of  surprise!  Although  the 
world  has  been  told  by  Germany's  spokes- 
men, including  Herr  BalHn,  Prince  von 
Billow,  and  even  Professor  Harnack  (all 
*'  honourable  men,"  and  the  last  of  them  a 
churchman),  that  down  to  a  few  days  be- 
fore the  outbreak  of  hostilities  "  not  one 
human  being  "  among  them  had  "  dreamt 
of  war,"  it  is  the  fact  that  within  a  few 
hours  of  the  dispatch  of  Germany's  ulti- 
matum, to  Belgium,  before  the  ink  of  it 
could  yet  be  dry  and  while  the  period  of 
England's  ultimatum  in  defence  of  Belgian 
integrity  was  still  unexpired,  the  German 
Jegions  were  attacking  Liege. 

It  was  a  cowardly  and  contemptible  as- 
sault, but  what  a  resistance  it  met  with!    A 
little  peace-loving,   industrial  nation,   in- 
70 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

finitely  small  and  almost  utterly  untrained, 
compared  with  the  giant  in  arms  assailing 
it,  having  no  injury  to  avenge,  no  commerce 
to  capture,  no  territory  to  annex,  desiring 
only  to  be  left  alone  in  the  exercise  of  its 
independence,  stood  up  for  six  days  against 
the  invading  horde,  and  hurled  it  back. 

But  war  is  a  crude  and  clumsy  instru- 
ment for  the  defence  of  the  right,  and  after 
a  flash  of  Belgium's  unexampled  bravery 
we  were  compelled  to  witness  many  flashes 
of  her  terrible  suff*erings.  Liege  fell  before 
overwhelming  numbers,  then  Namur,  Ter- 
monde,  Brussels,  Louvain,  and,  last  of  all, 
Antwerp.  What  a  spectacle  of  horror! 
The  harvests  of  Belgium  trodden  into  the 
earth,  her  beautiful  cities  and  ancient  vil- 
lages given  up  to  the  flames,  her  historic 
monuments,  that  had  been  associated  with 
the  learning  and  piety  of  centuries,  razed 
to  the  ground ;  and,  above  everything  in  its 
pathos  and  pain,  the  multitudes  of  her 
people,  old  men,  old  women,  yoimg  girls, 

71 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

and  little  children  in  wooden  shoes,  after 
the  imnameable  atrocities  of  a  brutalized, 
infuriated,  and  licentious  soldiery,  flying  be- 
fore their  faces  as  before  a  plague! 

WHAT  KING  ALBERT  DID  FOR 
KINGSHIP 

BxjT  there  were  flashes  of  almost  divine 
light  in  the  black  darkness  of  Belgium's 
tragedy,  and  perhaps  the  brightest  of  them 
surrounded  the  person  of  her  King.  What 
King  Albert  did  in  those  dark  days  of 
August  1914,  to  keep  the  soul  of  his  nation 
alive  in  the  midst  of  the  immense  sorrow 
of  her  utter  overthrow  his  nation  alone  can 
fully  know.  But  we  who  are  not  Belgians 
were  thrilled  again  and  again  by  the  in- 
spired tones  of  a  great  Spirit  speaking  to 
his  subjects  with  that  authority,  dignity, 
and  courage  which  alone  among  free  nations 
are  sufiicient  to  unite  the  people  to  the 
Throne. 

"A  country  which  defends  its  liberties 
in  the  face  of  tyranny  commands  the  respect 
72 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

of  all.  Such  a  country  does  not  perish." 
What  King  Albert  did  for  Belgium  in 
the  stand  he  made  against  German  ag- 
gression is  partly  known  already,  and  will 
leave  its  record  in  history,  but  what  he  did 
at  the  same  time  for  kingship  throughout 
the  world,  as  well  as  in  his  country,  can  only 
be  realized  by  the  few  who  are  aware  that 
almost  at  the  moment  of  the  outbreak  of 
war  the  Belgian  Courts  (much  to  the  un- 
merited humiliation  of  Belgium)  were  on 
the  eve  of  such  disclosures  in  relation  to 
the  hfe  and  death  of  the  King's  predeces- 
sor as  would  certainly  have  shaken  the 
credit  of  monarchy  for  centuries. 

Nobody  who  ever  met  the  late  King 
Leopold  could  have  had  any  doubt  that  he 
was  a  great  man,  if  greatness  can  be  sepa- 
rated from  goodness  and  measured  solely 
by  energy  of  intellect  and  character.  I  see 
him  now  as  I  saw  him  in  a  garden  of  a 
house  on  the  Riviera,  the  huge,  unwieldy 
creature,  with  the  eyes  of  an  eagle,  the 
73 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

voice  of  a  bull  and  the  flat  tread  of  an 
elephant,  and  I  recall  the  thought  with 
which  I  came  away:  "Thank  God  that 
man  is  only  the  King  of  a  httle  country! 
If  he  had  been  the  sovereign  of  a  great 
State  he  would  have  become  the  scourge 
of  the  world." 

After  King  Leopold's  death,  accident 
brought  me  knowledge  of  astounding  facts 
of  his  last  days  which  were  shortly  to  be 
exposed  in  Court — of  the  measure  of  his 
unnatural  hatred  of  his  children;  of  his 
schemes  to  deprive  them  of  their  rightful 
inheritance ;  of  his  relations  with  certain  of 
his  favourites  and  his  death-bed  marriage 
to  one  of  them;  of  the  circumstances  attend- 
ing the  surgical  operation  which  immedi- 
ately preceded  the  extinction  of  his  hfe; 
of  the  burning  of  endless  documents  of 
doubtful  credit  during  the  night  before  the 
knife  was  used;  of  the  intrigues  of  women 
of  questionable  character  over  the  dying 
man's  body  to  share  the  ill-got  gold  he  had 
74 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

earned  in  the  Congo,  and  finally  of  his  end, 
not  in  his  palace,  but  in  a  little  hidden 
chalet,  alone  save  for  one  scheming  woman 
and  one  calculating  priest.  What  a  story- 
it  was,  whether  true  or  false,  or  (as  is  most 
probable)  partly  true  and  partly  false,  of 
shame,  greed,  lust,  and  life-long  duplicity! 
And  all  this  dark  tale  was  (one  way  or 
other)  to  be  told  in  the  cold  light  of  open 
Court,  to  the  general  discredit  of  monarchy, 
by  showing  the  world  how  contemptible 
may  be  some  of  the  creatures  who  control 
the  destinies  of  mankind. 

But  the  war  and  King  Albert's  part  in 
it  saved  Belgium  from  that  immerited 
obloquy.  The  modest,  retiring,  studious, 
almost  shy  but  heroic  young  sovereign  who, 
with  his  valiant  little  band,  is  fighting  by 
the  side  of  our  own  king's  soldiers,  and  the 
soldiers  of  the  Republic  of  France,  has  sus- 
tained the  highest  traditions  of  kingship. 
He  may  have  lost  his  country  at  the  hands 
of  a  great  Power,  drunk  with  pride,  but 
75 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

he  has  won  Immortahty.  He  may  have 
no  more  land  left  to  him  than  his  tent  is 
pitched  upon,  hut  his  spiritual  empire  is  as 
wide  as  the  world.  He  may  he  a  king  with- 
out a  kingdom,  hut  he  still  reigns  over  a 
kingdom  of  souls. 

"WHY  SHOULDN'T  THEY,  SINCE  THEY 
WERE  ENGLISHMEN  ?  " 

The  next  flash  as  of  hghtning  that  re- 
vealed to  us  the  progress  of  the  drama  of 
the  past  365  days  came  at  the  end  of  the 
first  month  of  the  war  with  the  terrible  story 
of  Mons.  That  touched  us  yet  more  closely 
than  the  tragedy  of  Belgium,  for  it  seemed 
at  first  to  be  our  own  tragedy.  Between 
the  departure  of  an  army  and  the  first  news 
of  victory  or  defeat  there  is  always  a  time 
of  exhausting  suspense.  At  what  moment 
our  first  Expeditionary  Force  had  left 
England  no  one  quite  knew,  but  after  we 
learned  that  it  had  landed  in  France  we 
waited  with  anxious  hearts  and  listened 
with  strained  ears. 

78 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

We  heard  the  tramp  of  the  gigantic  Ger- 
man army,  pouring  through  the  streets  of 
Brussels,  fully  equipped  down  to  its 
kitchens,  its  smoking  coffee-wagons,  its 
corps  of  gravediggers,  and,  of  course,  its 
cuirassiers  in  burnished  helmets  that  were 
shining  in  the  autumn  sun.  The  huge,  in- 
terminable, apparently  irresistible  multi- 
tude! Regiment  after  regiment,  battahon 
after  battalion,  going  on  and  on  for  hours, 
and  even  days — ^the  mighty  legions  of  the 
nation  that  a  few  days  before  had  "  never 
so  much  as  dreamt "  of  war! 

At  last  we  had  news  of  our  men.  Against 
overwhelming  odds  they  had  fought  hke 
heroes — why  shouldn't  they,  since  they  were 
Englishmen? — ^but  had  been  compelled  to 
fall  back  at  length,  and  were  now  retreating 
rapidly,  some  reports  said  flying  in  con- 
fusion, broken  and  done.  What?  Was  it 
possible?  Our  army  thrown  back  in  dis- 
order? Our  first  army,  too,  the  flower  of 
77 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

the  fighting  men  of  the  world?  It  was  too 
monstrous,  too  awful  1 

The  news  was  cruelly,  and  even  wickedly, 
exaggerated,  but  nevertheless  it  did  us  good. 
He  knows  the  British  character  very  imper- 
fectly who  does  not  see  that  the  qualities  in 
which  it  is  unsurpassed  among  the  races  of 
mankind  are  those  with  which  it  meets  ad- 
versity and  confronts  the  darkest  night. 
Within  a  few  days  of  the  report  that  our 
soldiers  were  falling  back  from  Mons,  the 
old  cry  "  Your  King  and  country  need  you  " 
went  through  the  land  with  a  new  thrill,  and 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  free  men  leapt  to 
the  relief  of  the  flag. 

There  has  been  nothing  like  it  in  the  his- 
tory of  any  nation.  And  it  is  hard  to  say 
which  is  the  more  moving  manifestation  of 
that  moment  in  the  great  drama  of  the  war 
— ^the  spontaneous  response  of  the  poor  who 
sprang  forward  to  defend  their  country, 
tkough  they  had  no  more  material  property 
tm  it  than  the  right  to  as  much  of  its  soil  as 
78 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

would  make  their  graves,  or  the  splendid 
reply  of  the  rich  whose  lands  were  an  age- 
long possession,  and  often  the  foundation 
of  their  titles  and  honours. 

"BUT  LIBERTY  MUST  GO  ON,  AND  .  .  . 
ENGLAND" 

What  startling  surprises!  We  of  the 
lower,  the  middle,  or  the  upper-middle 
classes  had  come  to  believe  that  too  many 
of  the  young  men  of  our  nobility  had  grown 
effeminate  in  idleness  and  selfish  pleasure 
indulged  in  on  the  borderland  of  a  kind  of 
aristocratic  Bohemia,  but,  behold!  they  were 
fighting  and  dying  with  the  bravest.  We 
had  thought  too  many  of  their  young  women 
(as  thoughtless  and  capricious  creatures  of 
fashion)  had  sacrificed  the  finest  bloom  of 
modest  and  courageous  womanhood  in  lux- 
luy  and  self-indulgence ;  but,  lo  I  they  were 
hurrying  to  the  battlefields  as  nurses,  and 
there  facing  without  flinching  the  scenes  of 
blood  and  horror,  of  foul  sights  and 
79 


THE  DRAMA  OF  865  DAYS 

stenches,  which  make  the  bravest  man's 
heart  tmn  sick. 

Some  of  the  scenes  at  home  in  those 
last  days  of  August  and  early  days  of  Sep- 
tember were  yet  more  affecting.  The  first 
of  our  casualty  hsts  had  been  published,  and 
they  were  terrible.  They  hit  the  old 
people  hardest,  the  old  fathers  and  old 
mothers  who  had  given  all,  and  had  nothing 
left — ^not  even  a  httle  child  to  hve  for.  At 
the  railway  stations,  when  fresh  troops  were 
leaving  for  the  front,  you  saw  sights  which 
searched  the  heart  so  much  that  you  felt 
ashamed  to  look,  feeling  they  opened  sanc- 
tuaries in  which  God's  eye  alone  should  see. 

Old  Lady  So-and-So  seeing  her  youngest 
son  off  to  Flanders.  She  has  lost  two  of  her 
sons  in  the  war  already,  and  Archie  is  the 
last  of  them.  The  dear  old  darling!  It  is 
pitiful  to  see  her  in  her  deep  black,  strug- 
gling to  keep  up  before  the  boy.  But  when 
the  train  has  left  the  platform  and  she  can 
no  longer  wave  her  handkerchief  she  breaks 
80 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

down  utterly.  "  I've  seen  the  last  of  him,'* 
she  says ;  "  something  tells  me  I've  seen  the 
last  of  him.  And  now  I've  given  every- 
thing I  have  to  the  comitry.'* 

Ah  I  that's  what  you  have  all  got  to  do,  or 
be  prepared  to  do,  you  brave  mothers  of 
.England,  if  you  have  to  defeat  a  desperate 
enemy,  who  stoops  to  any  method,  any 
crime. 

Then  old  Lord  Such-a-One  at  Victoria  to 
meet  the  body  of  his  only  son  being  brought 
back  from  the  hospital  at  Boulogne.  How 
proud  he  had  been  of  his  boy!  He  could 
remember  the  day  he  captained  for  Eton 
at  Lord's,  or  perhaps  rowed  stroke — and 
won — for  Cambridge.  And  now  on  the 
field  of  Flanders.  .  .  .  He  had  seen  it  com- 
ing, though.  He  had  thought  of  it  when 
the  war  broke  out.  "  Ours  is  an  old  family," 
he  had  told  himself,  "  four  hundred  years 
old,  and  my  son  is  the  last  of  us.  If  I  let 
him  go  to  the  war  my  line  may  end,  my 
family  may  stop  .  .  .  but  then  liberty  must 
81 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

go  on,  civilization  must  go  on,  and  .  .  . 
England!" 

Yes,  it  must  be  night  before  the  British 
star  will  shine. 

THE  PART  PLAYED  BY  FRANCE 

Perhaps  the  next  great  flash  as  of  lightning 
whereby  we  saw  the  drama  of  the  past  365 
days  was  that  which  revealed  at  its  sublimest 
moment  the  part  played  by  France.  In 
those  evil  days  of  July  1914,  when  German 
diplomacy  was  carrying  on  the  indecent  pre- 
tence of  quarrelling  with  France  about 
Austria's  right  to  punish  Serbia  for  the 
assassination  of  the  Archduke  Ferdinand, 
there  were  Frenchmen  still  living  who  had 
vivid  memories  of  three  bloody  campaigns. 
Some  could  remember  the  Crimean  War. 
More  could  recall  the  Italian  War  of  1859, 
which  brought  the  delirious  news  of  the  vic- 
tory of  Magenta,  and  closed  with  Solferino, 
and  the  triumphant  march  home  through 
the  Place  de  la  Bastille,  and  down  the  Rue 

82 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

de  la  Paix.  And  vast  numbers  were  still 
alive  who  could  remember  1870,  when  the 
Emperor  was  defeated  at  Worth  and  con- 
quered at  Sedan;  when  Paris  was  sur- 
rounded by  a  Prussian  army,  when  the 
booming  of  cannon  could  be  heard  on  the 
boulevards;  when  tenderly  nurtured 
women,  who  had  never  thought  to  beg  their 
bread,  had  been  forced  by  the  hunger  of 
their  children  to  stand  in  long  queues  at  the 
doors  of  the  bakers'  shops;  when  the  city 
was  at  length  starved  into  submission,  and 
the  proud  French  people,  with  their  imme- 
morial heritage  of  fame,  were  compelled  to 
permit  the  ghttering  Prussian  helmets  to 
go  shining  down  their  streets. 

A  new  generation  had  been  bom  to 
France  since  even  the  last  of  these  events, 
but  was  it  with  a  light  heart  that  she  took 
up  the  gage  which  Germany  so  haughtily 
threw  down?  Indeed,  no!  Never  had 
France,  the  bright,  the  brilliant,  the  cheer- 
ful-hearted, shown  the  world  a  graver  face. 

83 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

A  few  students  across  the  Seine  might 
shout  "A  Berlm!  A  Berlin! "  just  as  our 
boys  in  khaki  chalked  up  the  same  address 
on  their  gun  carriages.  Idlers  in  blouses 
along  the  quays  might  scream  the  "  Mar- 
seillaise." Gangs  of  ruffians  in  back  streets 
might  break  the  windows  of  the  shops  of 
German  tradespeople.  Some  bitter  old 
campaigners  might  talk  about  revenge.  But 
when  the  drums  beat  for  the  French  regi- 
ments to  start  away  for  Alsace  and  the 
Belgian  frontier,  the  heart  of  France  was 
calm  and  steadfast. 

"  This  is  a  fight  for  the  right,  for  France, 
and  for  the  freedom  of  our  souls  I  " 

THE  SOUL  OF  FRANCE 

Then  when  the  men  had  gone  there  came 
that  anxious  silence  in  which  every  ear  was 
strained  to  catch  the  first  cry  from  the  army. 
Would  it  be  victory  or  defeat?  In  the 
strength  of  her  new-bom  spirit  France  was 
ready  for  either  fate.    The  streets  of  Paris 

84 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

were  darkened ;  the  theatres  were  shut  up ; 
the  cafes  were  ordered  to  close  at  mne 
o'clock;  the  sale  of  absinthe  was  prohibited 
that  Frenchmen  might  have  every  faculty- 
alert  to  meet  their  destiny;  and  the  prin- 
cipal hotels  were  transformed  into  hospitals 
for  the  wounded  that  would  surely  come. 

They  came.  We  were  allowed  to  see  their 
coming,  and  in  those  early  days  of  the  war, 
before  the  Red  Cross  companies  had  got 
properly  to  work,  the  return  of  the  first  of 
the  fallen  among  the  French  soldiery  made 
a  terrible  spectacle.  At  suburban  stations, 
generally  in  the  middle  of  the  night,  long 
hues  of  third-class  railway  carriages,  as 
well  as  rectangular,  box-shaped  cattle 
wagons,  such  as  in  conscript  countries  are 
used  for  purposes  of  mobilization,  would 
draw  up  out  of  the  darkness. 

Instantly  hundreds  of  pale,  wasted,  gen- 
erally bearded,  and  often  wounded  faces 
would  appear  at  the  windows,  crying  out 
for  coffee  or  chocolate.     Then  the  cattle 

85 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

wagons  would  be  unbolted,  and  the  great 
doors  thrown  back,  disclosing  six  or  eight 
men  in  each,  lying  outstretched  on  straw, 
with  their  limbs  swathed  in  blood-stained 
bandages,  and  their  eyes  glazed  with  pain. 
They  were  the  brave  fellows  who,  a  few 
weeks  before,  had  gone  to  Flanders  in  the 
pride  and  prime  of  their  strength.  In  some 
cases  they  had  lain  like  that  for  two  whole 
days  on  their  long  way  back  from  the  fight- 
ing line,  with  no  one  to  give  them  meat  or 
drink,  with  nothing  to  see  in  the  darkness 
of  their  moving  tomb  and  nothing  to  hear, 
except  the  grinding  of  the  iron  wheels  be- 
neath them,  and  the  cries  of  the  comrades 
by  their  side. 

"  Mon  Dieu!  Que  de  souff ranees!  Qui 
I'aurait  cru  possible?  O  mon  Dieu,  aie  pitie 
de  moi." 

THE  MOTHERHOOD   OF  FRANCE 
Still,  the  soul  of  France  did  not  fail  her.  It 
heard  the  second  approach  of  that  mon- 
strous Prussian  horde,  which,  like  a  broad, 
86 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

irresistible  tide,  sweeping  across  one  half  of 
Europe,  came  down,  down,  down  from 
Mons  mitil  the  thunder  of  its  guns  could 
again  be  heard  on  the  boulevards.  And 
then  came  the  great  miracle!  Just  as  the 
sea  itself  can  rise  no  higher  when  it  has 
reached  the  top  of  the  flood,  so  the  mighty- 
army  of  Germany  had  to  stop  its  advance 
thirty  kilometres  north  of  Paris,  and  when 
it  stirred  again  it  had  to  go  back.  And  back 
and  back  it  went  before  the  armies  of 
France,  Britain,  and  Belgium,  until  it 
reached  a  point  at  which  it  could  dig  itself 
into  the  earth  and  hide  in  a  long  serpentine 
trench  stretching  from  the  Alps  to  the  sea. 
Only  then  did  the  spirit  of  France  draw 
breath  for  a  moment,  and  the  next  flash  as 
of  Hghtning  showed  her  off'ering  thanks  and 
making  supplications  before  the  white 
statue  of  Jeanne  d'Arc  in  the  apse  of  the 
great  cathedral  of  Notre  Dame,  sacred  to 
innumerable  memories.  On  the  Feast  of 
St.  Michael  10,000  of  the  women  of  Paris 
87 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

were  kneeling  under  the  dark  vault,  and  on 
the  broad  space  in  front  of  the  majestic 
facjade,  to  call  on  the  Maid  of  Orleans  to 
intercede  with  the  Virgin  for  victory.  It 
was  a  great  and  grandiose  scene,  recalling 
the  days  when  faith  was  strong  and  purer. 
Old  and  young,  rich  and  poor,  every  woman 
with  some  soul  that  was  dear  to  her  in  that 
inferno  at  the  front — ^the  Motherhood  of 
France  was  there  to  pray  to  the  Mother  of 
all  hving  to  ask  God  for  the  triumph  of  the 
right. 

"Jesus,  hear  our  cry  for  our  country! 
Justice  for  France,  O  God  I  " 

And  in  the  spirit  of  that  prayer  the  soul 
of  France  still  hves. 

FIVE  MONTHS  AFTER 

The  next  of  the  flashes  as  of  lightning  that 

revealed  the  drama  of  the  past  365  days 

came  to  us  at  Christmas.    The  war  had  then 

been  going  on  five  months,   showing  us 

many  strange  and  terrible  sights,  but  noth- 
88 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

ing  stranger  and  more  terrible  than  the 
changed  aspect  of  warfare  itself.  A  battle- 
field had  ceased  to  be  a  scene  of  pomp  and 
of  personal  prowess,  with  the  charging  of 
galloping  cavalry,  the  clash  of  glittering 
arms,  and  the  advancing  and  retiring  of 
vast  numbers  of  soldiery.  It  was  now  a 
broad  and  desolate  waste,  in  which  no  hu- 
man figure  was  anywhere  visible  as  far  as 
the  eye  could  reach — a  monstrous  scar  on 
the  face  of  the  globe,  such  as  we  see  in 
volcanic  countries,  only  differing  in  the  evi- 
dence of  design  that  came  of  long,  parallel 
fines  of  tumed-up  soil,  which  were  the 
trenches  wherein  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
men  lived  under  the  surface  of  the  ground. 
Over  this  barren  waste  there  was  almost 
perpetual  smoke,  and  through  the  smoke  a 
deafening  cannonading,  which  came  of  the 
hurling  through  the  air  of  scythes  of  steel, 
called  shells.  Sometimes  the  shells  were 
burying  themselves  unbroken  in  the  empty 
earth,  but  too  often  they  were  scouring  the 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

trenches,  where  they  were  bursting  into 
jagged  parts  and  sending  up  showers  of 
horrible  fragments  which  had  once  been  the 
limbs  of  hving  men. 

Such  was  warfare  by  machinery  as  the 
world  caught  its  first,  full,  horrified  sight 
of  it  between  the  beginning  of  August  and 
the  end  of  December  1914.  But  even  out 
of  that  maelstrom  of  horror  there  had  been 
glimpses  of  great  things — ^great  heroisms, 
great  victories,  and  great  proofs  of  the 
power  to  endure.  A  rigid  censorship, 
rightly  designed  to  keep  back  from  the 
enemy  the  information  that  would  endanger 
the  lives  of  our  soldiers,  was  also  keeping 
us  in  ignorance  of  many  glorious  incidents 
of  the  war  such  as  would  have  thrilled  us 
up  to  our  throbbing  throat.  But  some  of 
them  could  not  possibly  be  concealed,  so  we 
heard  of  the  gallant  stand  of  the  dauntless 
sons  of  our  daughter  Canada,  and  we  saw  our 
great  old  warrior.  Lord  Roberts,  going  out 
to  the  front  in  his  eighty-third  year  to  visit 
00 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

his  beloved  Indian  troops,  dying  as  was 
most  fit  on  the  battlefield,  within  sound 
of  the  guns  in  the  war  he  had  foretold,  and 
then  being  brought  home,  borne  through 
the  crowded  streets  of  London  and  buried 
under  the  dome  of  St.  Paul's,  amid  the 
homage  of  his  King  and  people. 

THE  COMING  OF  WINTER 

Then,  as  the  year  deepened  towards  winter, 
the  rains  came,  torrential  rains  such  as  we 
thought  we  had  never  known  the  hke  of  be- 
fore. We  heard  that  the  trenches  were 
flooded,  and  that  our  soldiers  were  eating, 
sleeping,  and  fighting  ankle-deep  (some- 
times knee-deep)  in  water.  At  night,  on 
going  to  our  white  beds  at  home,  we  had 
remorseful  visions  of  those  slimy  red  ruts 
in  Flanders  where  our  boys  were  lying  out 
in  the  drenching  rain  under  the  heavy  dark- 
ness of  the  sky.  It  was  hard  to  believe  that 
human  strength  could  sustain  itself  against 
such  cruel  conditions,  and  indeed  it  often 
failed. 

01 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

Towards  Christmas  tens  of  thousands  of 
our  men  had  to  be  brought  home  to  our 
hospitals,  many  of  them  wounded,  but  not 
a  few  suffering  from  maladies  which  made 
them  unfit  for  mihtary  service.  The  acci- 
dent of  being  asked  to  distribute  presents 
enabled  me  to  see  and  talk  with  hundreds 
of  them.  It  was  a  sweet  and  exhilarating 
yet  rather  nerve-racking  experience.  These 
young  fellows,  who  had  looked  on  death  in 
its  most  horrible  aspects,  having  had  it  for 
their  duty  to  kill  as  many  Germans  as  pos- 
sible, and  then  to  eat  and  sleep  as  if  nothing 
had  occurred — ^had  they  been  degraded, 
brutahzed,  lowered  in  the  scale  of  human 
creatures  by  their  awful  ordeal? 

The  sequel  surprised  me.  The  veil  of 
mist  with  which  a  London  winter  enshrouds 
the  beginnings  of  night  and  day  had  only 
just  risen  when  on  Christmas  morning  I 
reached  the  wounded  soldiers'  ward  in  the 
first  of  the  hospitals  I  visited.  The  sweet 
place  was  decked  out  with  holly  and  mistle- 
92 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

toe.  Forty  or  fifty  men  were  lying  there 
in  their  beds,  some  bandaged  about  the 
head,  a  few  about  the  face,  more  about  the 
body,  arms,  and  legs.  None  of  them  seemed 
to  be  in  serious  pain,  and  nearly  all  were 
cheerful,  even  bright,  boyish,  and  almost 
childlike.  What  stories  they  had  to  tell  of 
the  inferno  they  had  come  from!  It  was 
hell,  infernal  hell.  They  would  go  back,  of 
course,  when  they  were  better,  and  had  to 
do  so,  but  if  anybody  said  he  wanted  to  go 
back  he  was  telling  a  damn'd  lie. 

One  boy,  scarcely  out  of  his  teens,  with 
soft,  womanly  eyes,  light  hair,  and  a  face 
that  made  me  sure  he  must  be  the  living 
image  of  his  mother,  had  had  a  narrow  es- 
cape. After  being  wounded  he  had  been 
taken  prisoner  to  a  farmhouse.  Nobody 
there  had  done  anything  for  him,  and  at 
length,  after  many  hours,  watching  his  op- 
portunity, he  had  crept  into  the  darkness 

and  got  back  to  the  British  trenches  by 
S3 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

crawling  for  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  mile  on 
hands  and  knees. 

Another  young  soldier,  an  Irishman,  told 
me  a  brave  story,  such  as  might  have  been 
allowed,  I  thought,  to  scratch  and  scrape 
its  way  through  the  thorn  hedge  of  the 
strictest  censorship.  It  was  a  story  of  the 
great  days  before  the  armies  had  dug  them- 
selves into  the  earth  like  rabbits.  Perhaps 
I  had  heard  something  about  it?  I  had. 
Eight  hundred  of  his  cavalry  regiment  had 
ridden  full  gallop  into  a  solid  block  of  the 
enemy,  making  a  way  through  them  as  wide 
as  Sackville  Street.  At  length  the  Ger- 
mans in  front  had  dropped  their  rifles  and 
held  up  their  hands,  whereupon  our  men 
had  ceased  to  slay.  But,  being  unable  to 
rein  in  their  frantic  horses,  they  had  been 
compelled  to  gallop  on.  Then,  while  their 
backs  were  turned,  the  treacherous  Huns 
had  picked  up  their  rifles  and  fired  on  them 

from  behind,  killing  many  of  our  best  men. 
94 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

**  And  what  did  you  do  then?  "  I  asked. 

"  Turned  back  and " 

"And  what?" 

"  Took  one  man  alive,  sor." 

"  And  the  rest?  " 

"  Left  them  there,  sor." 

"  And  how  many  of  you  got  back?  " 

"  Less  than  two  hundred,  sor." 

CHRISTMAS  IN  THE  TRENCHES 

Then  Christmas  in  the  trenches — ^we  had 
ghmpses  of  that,  too.  The  people  who  gov- 
erned nations  from  their  Parhament 
Houses  might  have  doubts  about  the  peace- 
dream  of  the  poets,  the  Utopia  of  universal 
brotherhood  which  gleams  somewhere 
ahead  in  the  far  future  of  humanity,  but  the 
soldiers  on  the  battlefields,  even  in  the 
welter  of  blood  and  death,  had  somehow 
heard  the  caU  of  it. 

The  appeal  of  the  Pope  for  a  truce  to 
hostilities  during  the  days  sacred  to  the 
Christian  faith  had  fallen  on  deaf  ears  in 
95 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

the  Cabinets  of  Europe.  In  that  zone  of 
mutual  deception  which  is  another  name  for 
war,  neither  of  the  belligerents  could  trust 
the  other  not  to  take  an  unfair  advantage  of 
any  respite  from  slaying  that  might  be 
called  in  the  name  of  Christ,  and,  therefore, 
the  armies  must  continue  to  fight.  But  the 
men  in  the  trenches  had  found  for  them- 
selves a  better  way.  When  Christmas  Eve 
came  they  began — German  and  British — ^to 
talk  about  Christmas  Eves  which  they  had 
spent  at  home.  Visions  arose  of  crowded 
streets,  of  shops  decorated  with  holly  and 
mistletoe,  of  churches  with  little  candle-Ut 
Nativities,  of  Christmas-trees  at  home  laden 
with  fairy  lamps  and  presents,  of  children 
sitting  up  late  to  dance  and  laugh  and  then 
hanging  up  their  stockings  before  going  to 
bed  to  dream  of  Santa  Claus,  of  church  bells 
ringing  for  midnight  mass,  and,  last  of  all, 
of  the  "  waits "  by  the  old  cross  in  the 
market-place  in  the  midst  of  the  winter 
frost  and  snow. 

06 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

Suddenly  in  one  of  the  trenches  some  of 
the  soldiers  began  to  sing.  They  sang  a 
Christmas  carol, "  While  shepherds  watched 
their  flocks  by  night."  The  soldiers  in  the 
parallel  trenches  of  the  enemy  heard  it, 
knew  what  it  was,  and  joined  in  with 
another  Christmas  carol,  sung  in  their  own 
language.  In  a  little  while  both  sides  were 
singing,  each  in  its  turn,  hstening  and  re- 
plying, all  along  the  two  dark  gulhes  that 
stretched  across  blood-stained  Europe. 
Then  Chinese  lanterns  were  lit  and  stuck 
up  on  the  head  of  the  trenches,  and  saluta- 
tions were  shouted  across  the  narrow  ground 
between.  "  Merry  Christmas  to  you,  Fritz, 
old  man! "  "  Same  to  you.  Tommy! "  And 
then  next  morning,  Christmas  morning,  in 
the  grey  light  of  the  late  dawn,  some  dar- 
ing soul,  clambering  over  the  trench  head, 
marched  boldly  up  to  the  line  of  the  enemy 
with  the  salutation  of  the  sacred  day.  In 
another  moment  everybody  was  up  and  out, 
97 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

shaking  hands,  and  posing  for  photographs, 
friend  and  foe,  German  and  British. 

After  a  while  they  became  aware  that 
the  ground  they  were  standing  on  was  like 
an  unroofed  charnel-house,  littered  over 
with  the  bodies  of  their  unburied  dead.  So 
they  set  themselves  to  cover  up  their  com- 
rades in  the  earth,  never  asking  which  was 
British  and  which  German,  but  laying  them 
all  together  in  the  everlasting  brotherhood 
of  death — that  English  boy  whose  mother 
was  waiting  for  him  in  England,  and  this 
German  lad  whose  young  wife  was  weeping 
in  his  German  home. 

My  God,  why  do  men  make  wars? 

THE  COMING  OF  SPRING 

But  perhaps,  as  Zola  says,  it  is  only  the 
soft-hearted  philosophers  who  are  loud  in 
their  curses  of  war,  and  the  truer  wisdom 
was  that  of  the  stoical  ancients,  who  could 
look  with  indiiference  on  the  massacre  of 
millions.  To  keep  manly,  to  remind  our- 
98 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

selves  that  the  generations  come  and  go, 
that  after  all  people  die,  and  that  more  die 
one  year  than  another — ^this  should  be  the 
wise  man's  way  of  reconciling  himself  to 
the  inhumanities  of  war.  It  is  horrible  doc- 
trine, but  certainly  nature  seems  to  speak 
with  that  voice,  and  hence  the  pang  that 
came  to  us  with  the  next  great  flash  as  of 
lightning,  which  showed  us  the  battle-front 
at  the  beginning  of  the  spring. 

The  long  hues  in  the  West  had  hardly 
changed  so  much  as  a  single  point  to  north 
or  south  since  October  1914.  Yet  what  hor- 
rors of  conflict  the  intervening  months  had 
witnessed,  bloody  in  their  progress,  though 
barren  in  their  results  I  The  storms  of  the 
spring  (which  in  much  of  Northern  Europe 
is  only  another  name  for  a  second  winter) 
had  gone  through  it  all.  Our  soldiers  had 
suffered  frightfully,  and  some  of  us  at 
home,  awakening  in  the  middle  of  stormy 
nights,  had  thought  we  heard  the  booming 
of  far-off  guns  under  the  thunder  of  the 
sky. 

w 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

Three  millions  of  men  were  dead  by  this 
time,  and  that  belt  of  green  country,  which 
many  of  us  had  crossed  with  hght  hearts 
a  score  of  times,  was  nothing  now  but  a 
vast  graveyard  stretching  from  the  foot  of 
the  Swiss  mountains  to  the  margin  of  the 
North  Sea.  Here  a  charred  and  black- 
ened mass  of  stones,  which  had  once  been  a 
group  of  houses;  there  a  cottage  by  the 
roadside,  once  sweet  and  pretty  vmder  its 
mantle  of  wild  roses,  now  hideous  with  a 
gaping  hole  torn  in  its  walls,  and  its  httle 
bed  visible  behind  curtains  that  used  to  be 
white.  And  yet  Nature  was  going  on  the 
same  as  ever — hardly  giving  a  hint  that 
the  Great  Death  had  passed  that  way.  Our 
boys  at  the  front  wrote  home  that  the  leaves 
were  beginning  to  show  on  the  trees,  that 
the  grass  was  growing  again,  and  that  in 
the  lulls  of  the  cannonading  they  could  hear 
the  birds  singing. 


100 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

NATURE  GOES  HER  OWN  WAY 

We  found  it  heart-breaking.  But  it  has 
been  always  so.  I  was  in  Naples  during  the 
whole  period  of  the  last  great  eruption  of 
Vesuvius,  and,  looking  through  the  gloom 
of  the  heavens,  piled  high  with  the  whorls 
of  fire  and  smoke  that  were  covering  the 
Vesuvian  valleys  and  villages  with  a  grey 
shroud,  waist  deep,  of  volcanic  dust,  I 
thought  the  face  of  Nature  in  that  sweet 
spot  could  never  be  the  same  again;  but 
when  I  went  back  to  it  a  year  later  I  could 
see  no  difference.  I  sailed  south  through 
the  Straits  of  Messina  a  few  weeks  before 
the  earthquake,  and,  returning  north  a  few 
months  later,  I  looked  eagerly  for  the 
change  which  I  imagined  must  have  been 
made  by  the  frightful  upheaval  of  the 
earth  that  had  killed  hundreds  of  thousands, 
and  shaken  the  soul  of  the  entire  human 
family,  but  I  could  see  no  change  at  all, 
even  through  the  strongest  field-glasses, 
until  I  came  within  sight  of  the  waste  and 
101 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

wreckage  of  the  little  works  of  men.  Yes, 
Nature  goes  her  own  way,  winter  and  sum- 
mer, seedtime  and  harvest,  healing  her  own 
wounds,  but  taking  no  thought  of  ours. 

Yet,  cruel  as  Nature  seemed  to  be  at  the 
beginning  of  the  spring,  it  was  not  so  cruel 
as  man.  With  the  better  weather  our 
enemies  began  to  devise  and  put  into  opera- 
tion new  and  more  devilish  methods  of  war- 
fare. Perhaps  this  was  a  result  of  their 
fear,  for  there  is  no  cruelty  so  cruel  as  the 
cruelty  that  comes  of  fear,  and  no  inhu- 
manity so  inhuman.  Having  expressed 
themselves  as  shocked  by  our  alleged  use  of 
dum-dum  bullets,  they  were  now  ransack- 
ing their  laboratory  for  gases  that  would 
burst  the  lungs  of  our  soldiers,  and  for  in- 
flanmiable  oils  that  would  set  them  afire  as 
if  they  were  criminals  tarred  and  feathered 
and  tied  to  a  stake.  Their  battleships,  built 
to  fight  craft  of  their  own  kind,  or  at  least 
fortresses  capable  of  replying  to  their  fire, 
were  now  sent  out  to  bombard  innocent 
102 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

watering-places  lying  breast  open  to  the 
sea.  Their  air-craft,  constructed  for  re- 
connaissances, were  ordered  to  drop  bombs 
out  of  the  clouds  on  to  sleeping  cities  in 
the  darkness  of  the  night.  And  their  sub- 
marines, tolerated  by  international  courts 
only  as  weapons  of  attack  on  warships,  were 
authorized  to  sink  harmless  merchantmen, 
without  any  word  of  warning,  or  any  effort 
to  save  life.  Could  scientific  knowledge 
under  the  direction  of  moral  insanity  go 
one  step  farther?  Flying  in  the  highest  sky, 
hiding  behind  the  densest  clouds,  stealing 
across  the  heavens  in  the  dark  hours,  drop- 
ping fireballs  on  to  the  silent  earth,  sneak- 
ing back  in  the  dawn;  and  then  sailing 
through  the  womb  of  the  great  deep,  rising 
like  a  serpent  to  spit  death  at  innocent 
ships,  diving  to  avoid  destruction  and  scud- 
ding away  under  cover  of  the  empty  sea — 
what  a  spectacle  of  divine  power  at  the 
service  of  devilish  passion!  It  was  difficult 
to  believe  that  our  enemies  had  not  gone 
mad.  They  were  no  longer  fighting  like 
men,  but  like  demons. 
103 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

THE  SOUL  OF  THE  MAN  WHO  SANK  THE 
LUSITANIA 

The  crowning  horror  of  Germany's  bar- 
barities came  with  the  sinking  of  the  Lusi- 
tania.  Perhaps  nothing  less  shocking  could 
have  made  us  see  how  much  less  cruel  Na- 
ture is  at  her  worst  than  man  in  his  mad- 
ness may  be.  Three  years  before  the 
Titanic  had  been  sunk  on  a  clear  and  quiet 
night,  because  a  great  iceberg  formed  in 
the  frozen  north  had  floated  silently  down 
to  where,  crossing  the  ship's  course  in  mid- 
Atlantic,  it  struck  her  the  slanting  blow 
that  sent  her  to  the  bottom.  Thus  a  great, 
blind,  irresistible  force,  operatiug  without 
mahce  or  design,  had  in  that  case  destroyed 
more  than  a  thousand  human  lives.  But 
when  the  Lusitania  was  sunk  in  broad  day- 
light, and  nearly  as  many  persons  perished, 
it  was  because  our  brother  man,  in  the  bit- 
terness of  his  heart  and  the  cruelty  of  his 
fear,  had  been  bent  on  committing  wilful 
murder. 

What  is  the  present  state  of  the  soul  of 
the  person  who  perpetrated  that  crime? 

104 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

Can  he  excuse  himself  on  the  ground  that 
he  was  obeying  orders,  or  does  his  con- 
science refuse  to  be  chloroformed  into  si- 
lence by  that  hoary  old  subterfuge?  When 
he  first  saw  the  great  ship  sailing  up  in 
the  sunshine,  its  decks  crowded  with  peace- 
ful passengers,  and  he  rose  like  a  murderer 
out  of  his  hiding-place  in  the  bowels  of  the 
sea,  what  were  the  feelings  with  which  he 
ordered  the  torpedo  to  be  fired?  When, 
having  launched  his  bolt,  he  sank  and  then 
rose  again,  and  heard  the  drowning  cries  of 
his  victims  struggling  in  the  water,  what 
were  the  emotions  with  which  he  ran  away? 
And  when  he  returned  to  tell  his  story  of 
the  work  he  had  done,  with  what  dignity 
of  manhood  did  he  hold  up  his  head  in  the 
company  of  Christian  men?  God  knows — 
only  God  and  one  of  his  creatures. 

THE  GERMAN  TOWER  OF  BABEL 
For  the  credit  of  human  nature  we  feel 
compelled,  in  sight  of  such  enormities,  to 
go  back  to  Mr.  Maeterlinck's  theory  that 
invisible  powers  of  evil  are  using  man  for 

105 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

the  execution  of  devilish  designs.  But  if 
so,  they  have  had  no  mercy  on  their  crea- 
tures. We  read  that  when,  in  fear  of  an- 
other flood,  not  trusting  the  promises  of  the 
Ahnighty,  the  children  of  Noah  began  to 
build  a  Tower  of  Babel,  the  Lord  sent  a 
confusion  of  tongues  among  them  to  bring 
their  design  to  destruction.  The  excuses 
the  Germans  have  offered  for  their  bar- 
barities suggest  a  confusion  of  intellect  that 
can  only  lead  to  a  Hke  result.  Has  the 
world  ever  before  listened  to  such  whirl- 
wind logic? 

When  a  German  submarine  has  sunk  a 
British  merchantman  and  left  her  crew  to 
perish  we  have  been  told  that  she  was  per- 
forming a  legitimate  act  of  war.  But  when 
a  British  merchantman  has  mounted  a  gun 
in  order  to  defend  herself,  she  has  been  said 
to  violate  the  law  of  nations.  When  British 
battleships  have  blockaded  German  ports 
they  have  been  trying  to  starve  sixty-five 
milHons  of  German  people.  But  when  Ger- 
man submarines  have  attempted  to  block- 
ade British  ports  by  drowning  a  thousand 

106 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

passengers  of  many  nations  on  a  British 
liner,  they  have  been  executing  a  just  re- 
venge. When  a  neutral  nation  in  Europe 
has  suppHed  foodstuffs  and  materials  of 
war  to  Germany,  she  has  been  doing  an  act 
of  simple  humanity.  But  when  the  United 
States  has  supplied  foodstuffs  and  ma- 
terials of  war  to  Great  Britain  she  has  been 
breaking  the  laws  of  her  neutrality.  When 
a  brutal  German  officer  has  shot  a  British 
civihan  in  a  railway  train  he  has  committed 
a  justifiable  homicide  and  becomes  a  proper 
person  for  promotion.  But  when  a  Belgian 
civilian  has  killed  a  German  soldier  who 
violated  his  daughter  before  his  eyes  he 
has  been  guilty  of  assassination  and  quite 
properly  shot  at  sight.  When  Germany 
has  refused  to  honour  her  name  to  a  "  scrap 
of  paper  "  she  has  been  a  holy  martyr  obey- 
ing a  law  of  necessity.  But  when  England 
has  honoured  hers  she  has  been  a  holy  hum- 
bug, whose  hypocrisy  deserved  to  be  ex- 
posed. Therefore  God  punish  England! 
Above  all,  when  God  has  crowned  the  arms 
of  Germany  with  success  on  the  battlefield, 

107 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

his  most  Christian  Majesty,  William  the 
Pious,  has  always  been  with  Him.  There- 
fore God  bless  the  Kaiser  I 

Surely  confusion  of  intellect  can  go  no 
further,  and  the  German  Tower  of  Babel 
must  soon  fall. 

THE  ALIEN  PERIL 

But  out  of  this  failure  of  logic  on  the  part 
of  "deep-thinking  Germany"  a  danger  came 
to  us  from  nearer  home  than  the  battlefield. 
One  of  the  most  vivid  flashes  as  of  lightning 
whereby  we  have  seen  the  drama  of  the  past 
365  days  was  that  which,  immediately  after 
the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania,  showed  us  the 
full  depths  of  the  "  alien  peril."  Before  the 
war  we  had  had  fifty  thousand  German- 
born  persons  living  in  our  midst.  They  had 
enjoyed  the  whole  freedom  of  our'  com- 
merce, the  whole  justice  of  our  law  courts, 
and  the  whole  protection  of  our  police. 
Many  of  them  had  married  our  British 
women,  who  had  borne  them  British  chil- 
dren. Most  of  them  had  learned  to  speak 
our  language,  and  some  of  us  had  learned 

108 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

to  understand  their  own.  A  few  had  be- 
come British  subjects,  and  many  had  been 
honoured  by  our  King.  Our  music,  liter- 
ature, and  art  had  become  theirs.  Shake- 
speare had,  in  effect,  become  a  German 
poet,  and  Wagner  a  British  composer. 
The  barriers  between  our  races  had  seemed 
to  break  down,  and  even  such  of  us  as  had 
small  hope  of  a  golden  age  of  universal 
brotherhood  had  begun  to  believe  that  mar- 
riage, mutual  interest,  education,  and  en- 
vironment were  making  us  one  with  these 
strangers  within  our  gates. 

Then  came  a  startHng  awakening.  We 
realized  beyond  possibihty  of  doubt  that 
many  thousands  of  our  German  aliens  had 
been  keeping  up  a  dual  responsibility,  and 
that  the  chief  of  their  two  duties  had  been 
duty  to  their  own  country.  We  found  be- 
yond question  that  a  settled  system  of  es- 
pionage was  at  work  in  Great  Britain, 
under  the  direction  of  the  German  author- 
ities; that  information  which  could  only  be 
of  use  in  the  event  of  invasion  had  for  many 
100 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

years  been  gathered  up  by  some  of  the 
people  whom  we  had  called  our  friends,  and 
that  day  by  day  and  hour  by  hour,  as  the 
war  went  on,  secrets  valuable  to  our  enemy 
had  been  filtering  through  to  Germany  from 
influential  places  in  this  country. 

What  a  shock  to  our  sense  of  security, 
oiu"  pride,  and  even  our  self-respect  I  The 
horror  of  the  discovery  reached  its  highest 
point  at  the  time  of  the  sinking  of  the  great 
liner,  for  then  it  was  realized  that  there 
could  be  no  limit  to  the  expression  of  Ger- 
man cruelty.  It  is  one  of  the  effects  of  the 
spirit  of  cruelty  to  strike  its  victims  with 
moral  blindness.  If  it  were  possible  that 
the  German  conscience  could  justify  mur- 
der on  the  sea,  why  should  it  not  justify 
it  on  land?  Why  should  not  our  German 
governesses  bum  down  the  houses  in  which 
our  children  lay  asleep?  Why  should  not 
a  German  secretary  attempt  to  assassinate 
oneof  our  pubhc  ministers?  War  was  war, 
and   whatever   was   necessary  was   right. 

110 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

"  We  are  doing  wrong,  but  it  is  necessary 
to  do  wrong,  and  necessity  knows  no  law." 

HYMNS  OF  HATE 

About  this  time  also  we  became  conscious 
of  a  fierce,  delirious,  intoxicating  hate  of 
our  people  which  was  developing  in  the 
hearts  of  our  enemies.  Before  the  out- 
breaking of  the  war  it  had  been  Russia  and 
the  Russians  who  had  (by  inherited  antip- 
athy from  the  founder  of  the  German  Em- 
pire) been  the  chief  objects  of  German  ha- 
tred. Now  it  was  Britain  and  the  British. 
Hymns  of  Hate  (our  enemies  called  it 
"  sacred  hate ")  were  composed,  recited, 
and  sung: 

French  and  Russian,  they  matter  not, 
A  blow  for  a  blow,  and  a  shot  for  a  shot. 
We  love  them  not,  we  hate  them  not. 
We  love  as  one,  we  hate  as  one. 
We  have  one  foe,  and  one  alone — 
England  ! 

England  was  not  moved  to  retaliate  in 
111 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

kind.  We  remembered  what  the  German 
Chm-chmen  had  said  about  our  Teutonic 
brotherhood,  and  allowed  ourselves  to  be- 
lieve that  this  was  only  the  call  of  the  blood 
in  the  German  race — the  mad,  bad  blood  of 
fratricidal  hate,  the  most  devilish  hate  of 
all.  We  also  reflected  that  it  was  a  form 
of  hatred  not  unfamiliar  in  asylums  for  the 
insane,  where  it  has  always  been  equally 
tragic  and  pitiful  in  its  effects,  and  cer- 
tain to  recoil  on  the  sufferer's  own  head. 
But  as  no  sane  father  of  a  family  would 
make  free  of  his  children's  nursery  the 
deranged  relative  who  required  the  protec- 
tion and  restraint  of  the  padded  room,  we 
decided  that  there  was  only  one  safe  way 
with  our  aliens  as  a  whole — ^to  shut  them  up. 
God  forbid  that  any  of  us  should  say 
that  all  our  German  aliens  were  under  sus- 
picion of  criminal  intentions.  On  the  con- 
trary, we  know  that  some  of  them  are 
among  the  sincere  friends  of  Great  Britain, 
passionately  opposing  Germany's  objects 

112 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

in  this  war  and  loathing  Germany's  meth- 
ods. We  know,  too,  that  a  few  belong  to 
that  rare  company  whose  sympathies  can 
rise  even  higher  than  nationahty  into  the 
realm  of  "  hmnan  empire."  We  also  know 
that  countless  persons,  long  resident  in  this 
comitry,  and  deeply  attached  to  the  land  of 
their  adoption,  have  suffered  unspeakable 
hardships  from  the  accident  of  German 
origin.  It  is  painful  to  think  of  some  of 
the  people  who  frequented  our  houses, 
whose  houses  we  frequented,  whose  wives 
and  children  are  our  kindred,  being  shut  up 
behind  barbed  wire  in  open  encampments. 
But  these  are  among  the  inevitable  cruel- 
ties of  a  war  for  which  we  are  not  respon- 
sible. In  putting  the  great  body  of  our 
enemy  aliens  under  control  we  did  no  more 
than  our  plain  duty  to  the  soldiers  who  were 
fighting  for  us  at  the  front.  What  will 
happen  to  them  (and  us)  when  the  war 
is  over,  and  they  come  out  of  their  prisons, 
none  can  say.    It  seems  as  if  the  world  can 

113 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

never  be  the  same  place  as  before — ^the 
devil  has  played  too  hard  a  game  with  it. 

THE  PART  PLAYED  BY  RUSSIA 

And  then  Russia  !  Distance  from  the 
scene  of  action,  the  great  length  of  the  line 
of  operations  and  the  vast  area  behind  it 
have  made  it  difficult  or  impossible  for 
us  to  see  the  drama  of  the  Russian  cam- 
paign as  we  have  seen  that  of  France,  Bel- 
gium, and  our  own  Empire.  But  we  have 
seen  something,  and  it  has  been  enough  to 
give  the  lie  to  certain  of  the  emphatic  pro- 
testations with  which  Germany  made  war. 
We  had  heard  it  said  by  the  German  Chan- 
cellor that  the  fact  that  Russia  was  mobiliz- 
ing in  those  last  days  of  July  1914  made  it 
impossible  for  Germany  to  ask  Austria  to 
extend  the  time-limit  imposed  upon  Serbia 
— a  time-limit  which  would  have  been  in- 
decent among  civilized  people  if  it  had 
concerned  nothing  more  serious  than  the 
destruction  of  a  kennel  of  dogs  suspected  of 
114 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

rabies.  But  all  the  world  knows  now  that 
Russian  mobilization  was  a  process  inevi- 
tably so  slow  that  the  German  armies  had 
flung  themselves  upon  Belgium  twelve  days 
before  the  Russian  advance  began. 

Then  we  had  heard  it  said  by  the  Ger- 
man Churchmen  that  in  taking  the  side  of 
Russia  we,  British  and  French  people,  lead- 
ers among  the  enhghtened  races,  were  help- 
ing Muscovite  barbarians  to  oppose  the 
cause  of  civilization.  But  since  Louvain, 
Termonde,  and  Rheims,  not  to  speak  of  the 
unnameable  iniquities  of  Liege,  the  world 
knows  where  the  barbaric  spirit  of  Europe 
had  its  central  home — in  Berlin,  not  in 
Petrograd  ;  in  the  proud  hearts  of  the  Ger- 
man over-lords,  not  the  meek  ones  of  the 
Russian  peasantry. 


115 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

THE  SHADOW  OF  THE  GREAT  DEATH 

The  truth,  as  everybody  knows  who  knows 
Russia,  is  that  "  barbarous,'*  the  classic 
taunt  of  the  German  against  Russia,  is,  of 
all  words,  the  least  proper  as  a  description 
of  the  Russian  mind  and  character.  I  have 
myself  been  only  once  in  Russia,  but  it  was 
on  a  long  visit  and  under  conditions  which 
were  calculated,  beyond  anything  that  has 
happened  since  down  to  to-day,  to  reveal 
to  me  the  whole  secret  of  the  Russian  soul. 
In  1892,  when  the  cholera  had  come  sweep- 
ing up  from  the  south,  I  travelled  for  weeks 
that  seemed  like  an  eternity  in  the  little 
towns  of  Galicia  and  the  cities  beyond  the 
Russian  frontier.  The  Great  Death  dark- 
ened my  sky  over  many  hundreds  of  miles 
of  travel.  I  visited  the  plague  spots  where 
men's  lives  were  being  mown  down  at  the 
devastating  stride  of  5000  deaths  a  week, 
and  where  men's  hearts,  the  nerve,  courage, 
sanity,  and  humanity  of  men,  were  being 

116 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

sapped  and  quenched  and  consumed  by  ter- 
ror and  panic  and  despair.  I  saw  the  Rus- 
sian people  under  the  black  shadow  and  in 
the  malign  presence  of  the  Great  Death, 
living  in  the  dark  clouds  of  inquietude  and 
dread  and  awe.  And  when  my  visit  came  to 
an  end  I  left  Russia  with  the  feeling  that, 
relatively  short  as  my  life  among  the  Rus- 
sian people  had  been,  I  knew  them  because 
I  had  been  with  them  when  their  very  souls 
lay  bare. 

What,  then,  did  I  see  ?  A  barbaric  peo- 
ple ?  No,  a  thousand  times,  no  I  I  saw  an 
uneducated  people;  a  neglected  people;  a 
people  badly  fed,  badly  housed,  and  badly 
protected  from  the  cruelties  of  a  rigorous 
climate ;  but  not  a  people  who  had  naturally 
one  barbaric  impulse,  if  by  that  we  mean  the 
"  will  to  life  "  which  animates  the  savage 
man.  And  I  now  say,  with  all  the  emphasis 
of  which  I  am  capable,  that  the  last  re- 
proach that  can  rightly  be  flung  at  the  Rus- 
sian people,  even  the  least  enlightened  of 
117 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

them,  the  Russian  peasants,  in  the  darkest 
reaches  of  their  vast  country,  is  that  they 
are  barbarians.  Deeds  of  cruelty  and  of 
barbarity  there  may  be  among  the  Rus- 
sians, as  there  are  among  all  peoples,  and 
the  dehimaanizing  conditions  inevitable  to 
warfare  may  perhaps  increase  the  number 
of  them,  but  the  outrages  of  Louvain,  Ter- 
monde,  Rheims  and  Liege  are  morally  and 
physically  impossible  to  the  Russian  race. 

THE  RUSSIAN  SOUL 

The  truth  is,  too,  that  there  is  not  in  the 
world  a  more  religious  people  than  the  Rus- 
sian— a  people  more  submissive  to  what 
they  conceive  (not  always  wisely)  to  be  the 
will  of  the  Almighty,  the  governance  of  the 
unseen  forces.  As  opposed  to  the  average 
German  intellect,  which  for  the  past  fifty 
years  has  been  struggling  day  and  night 
to  materialize  the  spiritual,  the  Russian 
intellect  seems  to  be  always  trying  to  spirit- 

uahze  the  material.    No  one  can  doubt  this 
118 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

who  has  seen  the  Russian  peasants  on  their 
pathetic  pilgrimages  to  the  Holy  Land, 
standing  (among  the  lepers,  uttering  their 
clamorous  lamentations)  before  the  gates 
of  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane,  or  trooping 
in  dense  crowds  down  the  steep  steps  to  the 
underground  Church  of  the  Virgin.  The 
literature  of  Russia,  too,  reflects  this  trait 
of  the  Russian  soul,  and  not  only  in  the 
works  of  Pushkin,  Gogol,  Tourgeneiff, 
Tolstoy,  Repin,  Dostoyevsky,  and  Glinka, 
or  yet  in  Kuprine,  Gorki,  Anoutchin,  Mer- 
ejkowsky,  and  Baranovsky,  but  in  those 
simpler  and  perhaps  cruder  writings  which 
speak  directly  to  uneducated  minds,  the 
same  striving  after  the  spiritual  is  every- 
where to  be  seen.  Books  like  Treitschke's, 
Nietzsche's,  and  Bemhardi's  would  be  im- 
possible in  Russia,  not,  heaven  knows,  be- 
cause of  their  "  intellectual  superiority," 
which  is  another  name  for  braggadocio,  but 
because  of  their  moral  insensibihty,  their 

glorification  of  the  physical  forces  of  the 
119 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

body  of  man,  which  the  Russian  mind  sets 
lower  than  the  miseen  powers  of  his  soul. 

THE  RUSSIAN  MOUJIK  MOBILIZING 

So  the  flashes  as  of  lightning  that  have 
shown  us  the  part  Russia  has  played  in  the 
drama  of  the  past  365  days  have  revealed  a 
people  acting  under  something  very  like  a 
religious  impulse.  We  have  seen  the  mou- 
jiks  being  mobilized  in  remote  parts  of  the 
vast  country,  and  have  found  it  a  moving 
picture.  It  is  probable  that  the  war  had 
been  going  on  for  weeks  before  they  heard 
anything  about  it.  Almost  certainly  they 
had  no  clear  idea  of  where  the  fighting  was, 
or  what  it  was  about,  the  theatre  of  the 
struggle  being  so  far  away  and  their  igno- 
rance of  the  world  outside  their  own  little 
communities  so  profound  and  impenetrable. 
We  may  be  sure  that  when  the  echo  of  the 
great  war  did  at  length  reach  them  it  was 
quite  imdisturbed  by  any  foolish  pretence 
associated   with   the  assassination   of   the 

120 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

Archduke  Ferdinand  (that  lie  could  only  be 
expected  to  impose  on  the  enlightened  peo- 
ples of  the  West)  and  concerned  itself 
solely  with  the  safety  of  Russia. 

The  humblest  Russian  is  proud  of  Rus- 
sia; proud  that  it  is  so  big  and  powerful 
among  the  nations  of  the  world.  He  will 
gladly  die  rather  than  see  it  made  less,  so 
deep  is  his  devotion  to  the  long-suffering 
giant  whose  blood  is  throbbing  in  his  veins. 
Therefore  when  the  call  of  war  came  to  the 
moujiks  in  their  far-off  homes,  we  saw 
them  answering  it  as  if  it  had  been  the  call 
of  their  faith.  First  a  service  in  the  vil- 
lage church  ;  then  a  procession  behind  the 
village  pope  to  the  village  shrine  ("  Now  go 
away  and  fight  for  Russia,  my  children  ") ; 
then  the  setting  off  for  the  distant  railway 
station,  the  mothers  and  young  wives  of  the 
soldiers  marching  for  miles  by  their  sides, 
carrying  their  rifles  and  haversacks  along 
the  wide  roads  white  with  dust.  What 
scenes  of  human  pathos !    For  a  long  time 

121 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

the  officers  are  indulgent  to  irregularities — 
have  they  not  just  left  their  own  dear 
women  behind  them  ? — but  at  length  the 
word  of  conmiand  rings  out,  and  everybody 
not  connected  with  the  army  has  to  go  back. 
Ah,  those  partings  !  Still,  God  is  good  ! 
And  hadn't  Masha  promised  to  burn  a  can- 
dle to  the  Virgin  every  day  while  her  hus- 
band is  away  ?  Ivan  will  come  back  ;  yes, 
of  course  Ivan  will  come  back,  and  by  that 
time  baby  will  be  bom,  and  then  what  joy, 
what  lifelong  happiness  I 

HOW  THE  RUSSIANS  MAKE  WAR 

From  some  of  the  greater  cities  of  Western 
Russia  there  came  flashes  of  similar  scenes. 
The  memory  of  that  time  of  the  cholera  is 
closely  involved  for  me  in  the  thought  of 
these  tragic  days,  and  by  the  light  of  what  I 
saw  in  Kief,  in  Sosnowitz,  in  Lublin,  in 
Cracow,  in  Warsaw,  and  along  the  line  of 
front  in  poor,  stricken  Poland,  where,  as  I 
write,  men  are  being  mown  down  hke  grass, 

122 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

I  seem  to  see  what  took  place  there  at  the 
beginning  of  August  1914,  and  is  taking 
place  now.  I  see  the  churches  crowded  and 
the  congregations  traihng  out  through  the 
open  porches  into  the  churchyards  around 
them.  Old  men  and  women  who  are  too 
lame  to  struggle  their  way  through  the 
throng  are  lying  under  the  open  windows 
with  their  sticks  and  crutches  stretched  out 
beside  them.  Others  outside  are  on  their 
knees,  following  the  services  as  they  pro- 
ceed within,  clasping  their  hands,  making 
the  sign  of  the  Cross,  giving  the  responses, 
and  joining  in  the  singing. 

Inside  the  churches,  where  the  women 
kneel  on  one  side  in  their  bright  cotton 
head-scarves  and  the  soldiers  on  the  other 
in  their  long,  dark  coats,  prayers  are  being 
said  for  Russia,  that  God  will  protect  her 
and  her  "  little  Father,"  the  Tsar,  and  all 
his  faithful  children,  making  the  dark  cloud 
that  is  on  their  horizon  to  pass  them  by  un- 
harmed.   From  porch  to  chancel  they  bend 

123 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

forward  with  their  faces  as  near  to  the  floor 
as  their  close  crowding  will  permit.  Then 
they  sing.  No  one  who  has  not  been  to 
Russia  has  ever  heard  such  singing — no, 
not  even  in  Rome  in  the  Church  of  the  Gesu 
as  the  clock  strikes  midnight  on  the  last 
day  of  the  year.  There  is  no  organ,  and  if 
there  is  a  choir  its  voices  are  lost  in  the  deep 
swell  of  the  melancholy  wail  that  rises  from 
the  people.  Perhaps  the  morning  is  a 
bright  one,  and  the  sun  is  shining  in  dusty 
sheets  of  dancing  light  through  the  clere- 
story windows  on  to  the  altar  ablaze  with 
gold,  twinkling  behind  its  yellow  candles 
and  the  bowed  heads  of  the  priests.  When 
the  service  ends  the  soldiers  form  up  in  lines 
and  march  out  through  the  kneeling  crowds 
within  and  the  overflowing  congregations 
lying  prone  outside. 

So  do  the  Russians  make  war.  Not  gen- 
erally to  the  beating  of  drums,  or  yet  the 
singing  of  their  searching  national  anthem, 

and  assuredly  not  as  bloodhounds  hunting 
124 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

for  prey,  but  in  the  spirit  of  a  simple  people, 
often  humble  in  their  ignorance  but  always 
strong  in  their  faith — in  the  certainty  that 
there  is  something  else  in  God's  world  be- 
sides greed  and  gold,  something  higher  than 
"the  will  to  power,"  something  better  for  a 
nation  than  to  enlarge  its  empire,  and  that 
is  to  possess  its  soul. 

And  now  in  their  hour  of  trial  let  us 
salute  our  brave  Allies  in  the  East.  Let  us 
assure  them  of  the  sincerity  of  our  alliance. 
We  rejoice  in  their  victories.  We  count 
their  triumphs  as  our  own.  When  we  hear 
of  their  reverses  our  hearts  are  full.  We 
feel  that  out  of  the  storm  of  battle  a  great 
new  spirit  has  been  bom  into  Russia,  awak- 
ening her  from  a  sleep  of  centuries.  We 
feel,  too,  that  a  great  new  spirit  of  brother- 
hood has  been  born  into  the  world,  uniting 
the  scattered  and  divided  parts  of  it,  and 
that  there  is  no  more  moving  manifestation 
of  the  unity  of  mankind  than  the  fact  that 
the  Russian  and  British  peoples,  after  long 
135 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

years  of  misunderstanding,  are  now  fight- 
ing for  the  same  cause  from  opposite  sides 
of  Europe.  May  they  soon  meet  and  clasp 
hands! 

THE  PART  PLAYED  BY  POLAND 

And  then  Poland.  Down  to  the  end  of  the 
first  year  of  war  the  part  played  by  Poland 
has  been  that  of  absolute  martyr.  Like  the 
water-mill  in  Zola's  story  she  has  first  been 
disabled  by  the  attack  of  her  enemies  and 
then  destroyed  by  the  defence  of  her 
friends.  Three  times  the  armies  of  the  bel- 
ligerents have  roUed  over  her,  and  now  that 
they  are  gone  she  lies  stricken  afresh,  even 
yet  more  fiercely,  under  the  famine  and 
pestilence  which  have  stalked  in  the  wake 
of  war. 

No  more  pitiful  and  abject  picture  does 
the  terrible  conflict  present.  Without  part 
or  lot  in  the  European  quarrel,  with  little 
to  gain  and  ever3i;hing  to  lose  by  it,  having 

no  such  right  of  choice  as  gave  glory  to  the 
126 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

martyrdom  of  Belgium,  Poland  has  had 
nothing  to  do  but  to  endure. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war,  when  the 
battery  of  German  hatred  was  directed 
chiefly  against  Russia,  the  world  was  told 
that  the  measure  of  her  barbarity  was  to  be 
seen  in  the  condition  to  which  the  Pohsh 
people  had  been  reduced  under  Russian 
rule.  But  did  the  Hamacks,  Hauptmanns, 
Ballins  and  von  Billows  who  put  forth 
this  plea,  count  on  our  ignorance  of  Galicia, 
in  which  the  condition  of  the  Poles  is  im- 
measurably more  wretched  under  the  rule 
of  their  Ally,  Austria? 

In  the  fateful  year  1892 1  travelled  much 
in  Galicia,  and  saw  something  of  the  effects 
of  Austrian  government.  My  impressions 
of  both  were  unfavorable.  From  points  of 
natural  wealth  and  beauty,  Galicia  is  per- 
haps, of  all  countries,  the  least  favoured  of 
God.  Shut  out  from  the  warm  southern 
winds  by  the  Carpathian  mountains,  and 
exposed  to  the  northern  blasts  that  sweep 

127 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

down  from  the  broad  steppes  of  Russia,  the 
long  and  narrow  stretch  of  Gahcian  terri- 
tory is  probably  the  most  inhospitable 
region  in  the  western  world.  Flat  and 
featureless;  with  swampy  and  ague-stricken 
plains,  unbroken  by  trees  and  hedges ;  with 
roads  like  canals,  dissecting  dreary  wastes, 
black  in  the  south,  where  the  loam  lies, 
light  in  the  north  where  salt  is  found;  with 
rivers  without  banks  fraying  into  pools  and 
ponds  and  marshes;  with  soppy  fields  in 
formal  stripes  like  the  patches  of  a  patch- 
work quilt;  with  villages  of  log-houses,  each 
having  its  cemetery  a  little  apart,  and  its 
wooden  crucifix  like  a  gibbet  at  a  space  be- 
yond— such  is  a  great  part  of  Galicia,  the 
Polish  province  of  Austria. 

A  PROVINCE  WITHOUT  A  SOUL 

But  little  as  Nature  has  done  to  cheer  the 
spirits  of  the  Poles,  who  live  under  Aus- 
trian rule,  what  man  has  done  is  less.    It  is 

nothing  at  all,   or  worse  than  nothing. 
128 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

Thickly-sown  on  the  eastern  frontier  are 
many  densely  populated  manufacturing 
towns,  ugly  and  squat,  and  giving  the  ef- 
fect of  standing  barefoot  on  the  damp  earth. 
As  you  walk  through  them  they  look  like 
interminable  lines  of  featureless  streets,  full 
of  those  sweating,  screaming,  squabbling 
masses  of  humanity  that  take  away  all  your 
pride  in  the  dignity  of  man's  estate.  The 
prevailing  colour  is  yellow,  the  dominant 
odour  is  noxious,  the  thoroughfares  are  nar- 
row, and  often  unpaved.  In  the  busier 
quarters  the  shops  are  sometimes  spacious, 
but  more  frequently  they  are  mere  slits  in 
the  monotonous  f  agades.  When  closed,  as 
on  Sunday,  these  slits  give  the  appearance 
of  a  row  of  prison  cells.  When  open  they 
present  crude  pictures  on  the  inner  faces  of 
their  doors — pictures  of  boots,  caps, 
trousers,  stockings  or  corsets,  a  typology 
which  seems  to  be  more  necessary  than 
words  to  inhabitants  who  have  not,  as  a 

whole,  been  taught  to  read. 
129 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

And  then  the  people  themselves  I  Per- 
haps there  is  not  in  all  the  world  a  more 
hopeless-looking  race,  with  their  lagging 
lower  lips,  their  dull  grey  eyes,  their  dosy, 
helpless,  exanimate  expression,  suggesting 
that  the  body  is  half  asleep  and  the  spirit 
no  more  than  half  awake.  To  see  them 
slouching  along  the  streets,  or  sitting  in 
stupefied  groups  at  the  doors  of  brandy- 
shops,  passing  a  single  bottle  from  mouth  to 
mouth,  is  to  realize  how  low  humanity  may 
faU  in  its  own  esteem  under  the  rule  of  an 
alien  government.  To  watch  them  at 
prayer  in  their  little  Catholic  churches  is  to 
feel  that  they  have  been  made  to  think  of 
themselves  as  the  least  of  God's  creatures, 
unworthy  to  come  to  His  footstool — always 
ready  to  kiss  the  earth,  and  never  daring 
to  lift  their  eyes  to  heaven,  having  no  right, 
and  hardly  any  hope. 

Such  are  the  poorer  and  more  degraded 

of  the  Poles  in  the  Austrian  crownland  of 

Galicia,  which  has  lately  been  swept  by  war 
130 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

(along  the  banks  of  the  Vistula,  the 
Dniester,  and  the  Bug) ,  and  is  now  perish- 
ing of  hunger,  and  being  devastated  by 
disease.  And  when  I  ask  myself  what  has 
been  the  root-cause  of  a  degradation  so 
deep  in  a  people  who  once  laboured  for  the 
humanities  of  the  world  and  upheld  the 
traditions  of  Culture,  I  find  only  one 
answer — ^the  suppression  of  nationality!  In 
that  fact  lies  the  moral  of  Galicia's  martyr- 
dom. Let  Belgium's  nationality  be  sup- 
pressed as  Germany  is  now  trying  to  sup- 
press it,  and  her  condition  will  soon  be  like 
that  of  Austrian  Poland.  You  cannot  ex- 
pect to  keep  the  body  of  a  nation  alive  while 
you  are  doing  your  best  to  destroy  its  soul. 

THE  SOUL  OF  POLAND 

It  is  a  fearful  thing  to  murder,  or  attempt 

to  murder,  the  soul  of  a  nation.    The  call 

that  comes  to  a  people's  heart  from  the  soil 

that  gave  them  birth  is  a  spiritual  force 

which  no  conquering  empire  should  dare  to 
131 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

kill.  How  powerful  it  is,  how  mysterious, 
how  unaccountable,  and  how  infinitely 
pathetic!  The  land  of  one's  country  may 
be  so  bleak,  so  bare,  so  barren,  that  the 
stranger  may  think  God  can  never  have  in- 
tended that  it  should  be  trodden  by  the  foot 
of  man,  yet  it  seems  to  us,  who  were  bom 
to  it,  to  be  the  fairest  spot  the  sun  shines 
upon.  The  songs  of  one's  country  may  be 
the  simplest  staves  that  ever  shaped  them- 
selves into  music,  yet  they  search  our  hearts 
as  the  loftiest  compositions  never  can.  The 
language  of  one's  coimtry  (even  the  dialect 
of  one's  district)  may  be  the  crudest  cor- 
ruption that  ever  lived  on  human  lips,  yet 
it  lights  up  dark  regions  of  our  conscious- 
ness which  the  purest  of  the  classic  tongues 
can  never  reach.  Do  we  not  all  feel  this, 
whatever  the  qualities  or  defects  of  our 
native  speech — every  Scotsman,  every 
Irishman,  every  Welshman,  nay,  every 
Yorkshireman,  every  Lancashireman,  every 
Devonshireman,  when  he  hears  the  word 
132 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

and  the  tone  which  belong  to  his  own 
people  only?  There  are  phrases  in  the 
Manx  and  the  Anglo-Manx  of  my  own  lit- 
tle race  which  I  can  never  hear  spoken  with- 
out the  sense  of  something  tingling  and 
throbbing  between  my  flesh  and  my  skin. 
Why?  Because  it  is  the  home-speech  of 
my  own  island,  and  whatever  she  is,  what- 
ever fate  may  befall  her,  however  she  may 
treat  me,  she  is  my  mother  and  I  am  her 
son. 

Such  is  the  mighty  and  mysterious  thing 
which  we  call  a  nation's  soul.  Nobody  can 
explain  it,  nobody  can  account  for  it,  but 
woe  to  the  presumptuous  empire  which  tries 
to  wipe  it  out.  It  can  never  be  wiped  out. 
Crushed  and  trodden  on  it  may  be,  as  Aus- 
tria has  crushed  and  trodden  on  the  soul  of 
Austrian  Poland,  and  as  Germany  has 
crushed  and  trodden  on  the  soul  of  Prus- 
sian Poland,  when  they  have  fallen  so  low 
in  the  scale  of  civilized  peoples  as  to  flog 
Polish  school  children  for  refusing  to  learn 
133 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

their  catechism  and  say  their  prayers  in  a 
language  which  they  cannot  understand. 
But  to  kill  the  soul  of  a  nation  is  impos- 
sible. The  German  Chancellor  could  not 
do  that  when  he  violated  the  body  of  Bel- 
gium. And  though  Warsaw  has  fallen  the 
fatuous  Prince  Leopold  of  Bavaria,  with 
his  preposterous  proclamations,  cannot  kill 
the  soul  of  Poland. 

At  Cracow  in  1892  I  tried  to  buy  for  one 
of  my  children  the  little  Polish  national 
cap,  but  after  a  vain  search  for  it  through 
many  shops  (where  I  was  generally  sus- 
pected of  being  a  spy  for  the  Austrian 
police) ,  the  cap  was  brought  to  me  at  night, 
in  my  private  room,  by  shopkeepers  who 
had  been  afraid  to  sell  it  openly  in  the  day. 
At  Wieliezhe,  I,  with  some  forty  persons 
of  various  nationalities  (including  the  usual 
contingent  of  detectives),  descended  the 
immense  and  marvellous  salt-mine  which  is 
now  used  as  a  show  place  for  visitors.  After 
passing,  by  the  flare  of  torches,  down  long 
galleries  of  underground  workings,  we  were 
plunged  into  darkness  by  a  rush  of  wind 
134 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

over  a  subterranean  river  through  which  we 
had  to  shoulder  our  way  on  a  raft.  Then 
suddenly,  no  face  being  visible  in  that  blacb 
tunnel  under  the  earth,  the  Pohsh  part  of 
our  company  broke  into  a  wild,  fierce, 
frenzied  singing  of  their  national  anthem 
which,  in  those  days,  they  dare  not  sing  on 
the  surface  and  in  the  light:  "  Poland  is  not 
lost  for  ever;  she  will  live  once  more." 

No,  Poland  is  not  lost  for  ever !    She  will 
live  once  more ! 

THE  OLD  SOLDIER  OF  LIBERTY 
And  Italy !  Although  it  is  only  since  May 
that  Italy  has  stood  by  our  side  on  the  bat- 
tle-front, in  an  effort  to  avert  from  the 
world  a  new  military  domination,  we  have 
known  from  the  beginning  that  her  heart 
was  with  the  Allies,  and  she  was  willing 
to  stake  all,  when  her  time  came,  for  the 
same  principles  of  humanity  and  freedom. 
A  Roman  friend  teUs  me  that  he  heard  an 
Italian  statesman  say,  "  Italy  always  meant 
war."    We  can  well  believe  it.    We  have 

136 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

believed  it  from  the  first.  On  one  of  the 
early  days  of  August,  when  a  British  regi- 
ment was  passing  through  the  streets  of 
London  on  its  way  to  Charing  Cross,  it 
was  noticed  that  an  old  man  in  a  red  shirt 
and  a  peaked  cap  was  marching  with  a 
proud  step  by  the  side  of  our  soldiers.  He 
turned  out  to  be  a  Garibaldian,  who  had 
been  living  many  years  in  Soho.  Having 
dug  up  from  his  time-eaten  trunk  the 
simple  regimentals  of  the  army  of  the 
Liberator,  he  had  come  out  to  walk  with 
our  boys  on  the  first  stage  of  their  journey 
to  France.  In  the  person  of  that  old  sol- 
dier of  liberty  we  saw  and  saluted  Italy — 
Italy  that  had  known  what  it  was  to  make 
her  own  sacrifices  for  the  right,  and  was 
now  ready  to  show  us  her  sympathy  in  this 
supreme  crisis  in  our  history. 

But  she  had  a  trying,  almost  a  tragic, 
time.  For  ten  long  months  she  lay  under 
the  quivering  wing  of  war,  in  danger  of 
attack  from  our  enemies,  and  liable  to  mis- 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

understanding  among  ourselves.  She  was 
party  to  a  Triple  Alliance  which,  ironically 
enough,  bound  her  (up  to  a  point)  to  her 
historic  adversary,  Austria,  as  well  as  to 
that  Germany  whose  emperors  had  again 
and  again  sent  their  legions  south  in  vain 
efforts  to  rule  even  the  papacy  from  across 
the  Rhine. 

How  that  alhance  came  to  be  made,  and 
remade,  against  the  sympathies  and  aspira- 
tions of  a  free  people  is  one  of  the  mysteries 
of  diplomacy  which  ItaHan  history  has  yet 
to  solve.  Perhaps  there  was  corruption; 
perhaps  there  was  nothing  worse  than  hon- 
est blundering;  perhaps  the  frequent  spec- 
tacular visits  to  Rome  of  the  Kaiser  Wil- 
liam (who  is  almost  Oriental  in  his  "  sense 
of  the  theatre,'*  and  knows  better,  perhaps, 
than  any  European  sovereign  since  Napo- 
leon how  to  apply  it  to  real  life)  played 
upon  the  eyes  of  the  Italian  race,  always 
susceptible  to  grandiose  exhibitions  of 
power  and  splendour.    But  we  cannot  for- 

137 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

get  the  old  Austrian  sore,  and  we  remem- 
ber what  Antonelli  is  reported  to  have  said 
to  Pius  IX  before  the  outbreak  of  the  cam- 
paign of  1859:  "Holy  Father,  if  the 
Italians  do  not  go  out  to  fight  Austria,  I 
believe,  on  my  honour,  the  nuns  will  do  so." 

THE  PART  PLAYED  BY  ITALY 

The  Triple  Alliance  was  a  secret  docu- 
ment, but  everybody  knew  that  it  required 
Italy  to  join  with  Austria  and  Germany  in 
the  event  of  their  being  compelled  to  en- 
gage in  a  defensive  war.  Therefore  the 
first  question  for  Italy  was  whether  the  war 
declared  by  Austria  against  Serbia  and  by 
Germany  against  Belgium,  although  ap- 
parently aggressive,  was  in  reality  defen- 
sive. There  was  a  further  question  for  Italy 
— ^what  would  happen  to  her  if  she  decided 
against  her  Allies?  She  did  decide  against 
them,  thereby  giving  the  lie  direct  to  the 
Harnacks,  Hauptmanns,  Ballins,  and  von 
Billows  who  had  been  telling  the  neutral 

138 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

nations  that  the  war  had  been  forced  upon 
Germany.  By  all  the  laws  of  nations  Ger- 
many and  Austria  ought  then,  if  they  had 
honestly  believed  their  own  story,  to  have 
declared  war  on  Italy.  They  preferred  to 
wheedle  her,  to  try  to  buy  her,  bribe  her, 
corrupt  her,  body  and  soul. 

They  failed.  After  flooding  the  pen- 
insula with  lying  literature,  directed  chiefly 
against  ourselves,  Germany  sent  back  to  the 
Italian  capital  its  most  astute  statesman, 
who  was  married  to  a  much-admired  Itahan 
woman.  It  was  all  in  vain.  Italy  knew 
her  own  mind  and  had  made  reckoning  with 
her  own  heart.  She  had  begun  with  con- 
tempt for  the  nation  which  could  invade 
Serbia,  under  the  pretence  of  avenging  the 
murder  of  the  Archduke  Ferdinand,  and 
with  loathing  for  the  other  nation  which 
could  violate  Belgium  after  it  had  sworn  to 
protect  her,  and  now  she  went  on  to  hatred 
and  horror  of  the  perpetrators  of  the  out- 
rages in  Liege,  in  Louvain,  and  in  Rheims, 
139 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

that  were  scorching  men's  eyes  in  the  name 
of  war. 

Still,  Italy,  although  separating  herself 
from  her  former  allies,  was  not  yet  taking 
sides  against  them.  Why?  If  their  war 
was  an  aggressive  and  unjustifiable  one, 
why  could  not  Italy  say  so  at  once  with  her 
sword  as  well  as  her  pen?  There  was  a 
period  of  uncertainty,  impatience,  even  of 
misunderstanding  among  her  own  people. 
Whispers  reached  them  that  their  King  had 
said  (he  never  had)  that  he  had  given  his 
"  kingly  word  "  for  it  that  if  Italy  could 
not  fight  with  her  former  friends  she  should 
not  fight  against  them.  This  was  a  blow  to 
Italian  aspirations,  for  Victor  Emmanuel 
III  is  the  best-beloved  man  in  Italy,  the 
father  of  his  people,  whose  heads  would 
bow  before  his  will  even  though  their  hearts 
were  torn. 

Then  came  negotiations  with  Austria 
about  the  restoration  of  provinces  which 
had  once  belonged  to  Italy  and  were  still 

140 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

inhabited  by  Italians.  It  looked  like  palter- 
ing and  peddling,  like  sale  and  barter.  The 
people  were  losing  patience;  they  thought 
time  was  being  wasted.  Beyond  the  Alps 
men  were  dying  for  liberty  in  a  mighty 
struggle  against  the  worst  tyranny  that  had 
ever  threatened  the  world,  yet  Italy  was 
doing  nothing. 

But  the  people  did  not  know  all.  Even 
then  their  country  was  already  at  war 
within  the  limits  of  her  own  frontier — 
silently  in  her  tailors'  workshops,  where 
imiforms  were  being  sewn  for  the  immense 
army  she  was  soon  to  call  into  the  field, 
audibly  in  the  forges  of  Milan  and  Temi, 
where  vast  quantities  of  munitions  were 
being  hammered  out  for  a  long  campaign. 

HOW  THE  WAR  ENTERED  ITAL¥ 

Then,  by  one  of  the  most  vivid,  if  pathetic, 
of  the  flashes  as  of  hghtning  that  have 
shown  us  the  drama  of  the  past  365  dayf, 
we  saw  the  actual  war  come  to  Italy.    It 

141 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

came  in  a  profoundly  impressive  form — the 
dead  body  of  young  Bruno  Garibaldi, 
grandson  of  the  Liberator.  Fighting  for 
France,  Bruno  had  fallen  in  a  gallant 
charge  at  the  front,  and  his  brother,  who 
was  by  his  side,  had  carried  his  body  out  of 
the  trenches  and  brought  it  home.  We  who 
know  Rome  do  not  need  to  be  told  how  it 
was  received  there.  We  can  see  the  dense 
mass  of  uncovered  heads  in  the  Piazza  delle 
Terme,  stretching  from  the  doors  of  the 
railway  station  to  the  bronze  fountain  at 
the  top  of  the  Via  Nazionale,  and  we  can 
hear  the  deep  swell  of  the  Garibaldian 
hymn,  which  comes  like  a  challenge  as  well 
as  a  moan  from  50,000  throats.  Not  for 
the  first  time  was  a  dead  Garibaldi  being 
borne  through  the  streets  of  Rome,  and 
those  of  us  who  remembered  the  earlier  day 
knew  well  that  with  the  body  of  this  Italian 
boy  the  war  had  entered  Italy. 

Then,  at  a  crisis  in  Italy's  internal  gov- 
ernment, our  enemy,  having  failed  to  buy, 
142 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

bribe,  or  corrupt  Italy,  began  to  threaten 
her.  Out  of  the  delirium  of  his  intoxicated 
conscience,  which  no  longer  shrank  from 
crime,  he  told  Italy  that  if  she  dared  to 
break  her  neutrality  her  fate  should  be  as 
the  fate  of  Belgium.  That  frightened  some 
of  us  for  a  moment.  We  thought  of  Venice, 
of  Florence,  of  Assisi,  of  Subiaco,  of 
Naples,  and  of  Rome,  and,  remembering 
the  methods  by  which  Germany  was  beat- 
ing and  bludgeoning  her  way  through  the 
war,  om*  hearts  trembled  and  thrilled  at  a 
dreadful  vision  of  the  lovely  and  beloved 
ItaUan  land  imder  the  heel  of  a  ruthless 
aggressor — of  the  destruction  of  the  his- 
tory of  Christendom  as  it  had  been  written 
by  great  artists  on  canvas  and  by  great 
architects  in  stone  through  the  long  calen- 
dar of  nearly  two  thousand  years.  But  we 
also  thought  of  Savoy,  of  Palestro,  of  Cas- 
ale,  of  Caprera,  and  of  "  Roma  o  morte," 
and  told  ourselves  that,  come  what  might, 
victory  or  defeat,  the  children  of  Victor 

143 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

Emmanuel  III  would  never  allow  them- 
selves to  buy  the  ease  and  safety  of  their 
bodies  by  the  corruption  and  degradation 
of  their  souls. 

THE  ITALIAN  SOUL 

That  was  the  great  and  awful  hour  when 
Italy  stood  on  the  threshold  of  her  fate; 
but  though  Great  Britain's  heart  was 
bleeding  from  the  sacrifices  she  had  already 
made,  and  had  still  to  make,  and  though 
Italy's  intervention  meant  so  much  to  us, 
we  did  not  feel  that  we  had  a  right  to  ask 
for  it.  And  neither  was  it  necessary  that 
we  sAiould  do  so.  The  treaty  that  bound 
Italy  to  England  was  not  written  on  a  scrap 
of  paper.  It  was  in  our  blood,  bom  of  our 
devotion  to  humanity,  to  justice,  to  liberty, 
and  to  the  memory  of  our  great  men. 
Therefore,  with  the  world  in  arms  about 
her,  let  Italy  do  what  she  thought  best  for 
herself,  and  the  bond  between  us  would  not 
be  broken! 

144 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

How  the  sequel  has  justified  our  faith! 
And  when  the  great  hour  struck  at  last, 
after  ten  months  of  suspense,  and  Italy — 
ready,  fully  equipped,  united — found  the 
voice  with  which  she  proclaimed  war,  what 
a  voice  it  was  I  Eloquent  voices  she  had  had 
throughout,  in  her  Press  as  well  as  in  her 
legislative  chambers — Morelli's,  Barzini's, 
Albertini's,  Malagodi's,  not  to  speak  of 
Sartorio's,  Ferrero's,  Annie  Vivanti's,  and 
many  more — but  it  quickens  my  pulse  to  re- 
member that  it  was  the  voice  of  a  poet  which 
at  the  final  moment  was  to  speak  for  the 
Italian  soul. 

Friends  newly  arrived  from  Italy  tell  me 
that  not  even  in  Rome  (where  one  always 
feels  as  if  one  were  living  on  the  borderland 
of  the  old  world  and  the  new,  with  thou- 
sands of  years  behind  and  thousands  of  years 
in  front)  can  anybody  remember  anything 
so  moving  as  the  substance  and  the  recep- 
tion of  Gabriele  d'Annunzio's  speech  from 
the  balcony  of  the  Hotel  Regina.    We  can 

145 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

well  imagine  it.  The  spirit  of  Time  itself 
could  have  found  no  greater  scene,  no  more 
thrilling  moment.  The  broad  highway  on 
the  breast  of  the  hill  going  up  to  the  Porta 
Pinciana,  faced  by  the  palace  of  the  Queen 
Mother  and  flanked  by  the  gardens  of  the 
Capuchin  monastery,  with  the  Colosseum, 
the  Capitol  and  the  Forum  almost  visible 
to  the  right — ^what  a  theatre  to  speak  in! 

There  were  5000  persons  below,  all  "  Ro- 
mans of  Rome,"  and  the  Queen  Mother 
was  on  her  balcony.  But  the  orator  was 
worthy  of  his  audience,  and  his  theme.  He 
had  the  past  for  his  prologue,  and  the  fu- 
ture for  his  epilogue.  Csesar,  Brutus, 
Cicero,  the  story  of  the  old  oppression  from 
which  the  world  had  freed  itself  after  age- 
long tribulation,  and  then  a  picture  of  the 
new  tyranny  that  was  sweeping  down  from 
across  the  Rhine.  What  wonder  if  the 
warm-hearted  Roman  populace,  to  whom 
patriotism  is  a  religion,  were  carried  away 
by  an  appeal  which  seemed  to  come  to  them 

146 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

with  the  voice  of  Dante,  Mazzini,  Carducci, 
and  Garibaldi  from  the  very  earth  beneath 
their  feet! 

So  on  May  20,  1915,  knowing  well  what 
the  terrors  of  war  were,  and  how  remote  the 
prospects  of  early  victory,  Italy  took  her 
place  in  arms  by  the  side  of  the  AlHes.  And 
now  the  heart  of  old  Rome,  so  long  per- 
tm-bed,  is  tranquil.  With  heroic  confidence 
she  relies  on  her  brave  sons,  led  by  her 
damitless  King,  to  justify  her.  And  when 
she  hears  the  truculent  boast  of  our  enemy 
that  after  he  has  disposed  of  Russia,  he 
will  destroy  Italy  as  a  power  in  Europe, 
she  answers  calmly,  "  Yes,  when  the  last 
Roman  capable  of  bearing  arms  hes  dead  in 
Roman  soil — ^perhaps  then,  but  not  sooner." 

THE  PART  PLAYED  BY  THE  NEUTRAL 
NATIONS 

And  then  the  neutral  countries — what  is  the 

part  which  they  have  played  in  the  drama 

of  the  past  365  days?    I  think  I  may  fairly 

U7 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

claim  to  have  had  better  opportunities  than 
most  people  for  studying  one  aspect  of  it, 
its  moral  aspect,  and  therefore  I  trust  I 
may  be  forgiven  if  I  make  a  personal  refer- 
ence. Seeing,  in  the  earliest  days  of  the 
war,  that  Germany  was  doing  her  best  to 
divert  the  eye  of  the  world  from  the  crime 
she  had  committed  in  Belgium,  and  being 
convinced  that  Britain's  hope  both  now  and 
in  the  future  lay  in  keeping  the  world's  eye 
fixed  on  that  outrage,  I  moved  the  pro- 
prietors of  the  Daily  Telegraph  to  the  pub- 
lication of  "  King  Albert's  Book." 

What  that  great  book  was  it  must  be 
quite  unnecessary  to  say,  but  it  may  be  per- 
mitted to  the  editor  to  claim  that  it  con- 
stituted the  first  ( as  it  may  well  be  the  final) 
impeachment  of  the  Kaiser  before  the  bar 
of  the  nations  for  a  crime  in  Belgium  as 
revolting  as  that  of  Frederick  the  Great  in 
Silesia  and  a  thousandfold  more  fatal. 
After  the  pubhcation  of  "  King  Albert's 
Book,"   Germany  knew  that  before  the 

148 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

tribunal  of  the  civilized  world  she  stood 
tried  and  condemned.  But  though  repre- 
sentative men  and  women  in  thirteen  differ- 
ent countries  united  within  the  covers  of 
the  historic  volume  to  express  their  abhor- 
rence of  Germany's  iniquity,  the  whole 
weight  of  the  world's  condemnation  could 
not  be  included. 

From  many  of  the  neutral  nations  there 
came  pathetic  cries  of  inability  to  join  in 
the  general  protest.  Famous  men  wrote 
that  the  neutrahty  of  their  countries  im- 
posed upon  them  the  duty  and  the  penalty 
of  silence.  "  My  brother  is  a  member  of 
our  Government,"  wrote  one  illustrious 
man  of  letters,  "  and  if  I  am  not  to  get  him 
into  trouble  I  must  hold  my  tongue."  An- 
other, whose  German  name,  if  it  could  be 
published,  would  carry  weight  throughout 
the  worid,  said :  "I  know  where  my  sym- 
pathy lies,  and  so  do  you,  but  I  dare  not 
speak,  for  I  am  a  German-bom  subject, 
and  to  tell  what  is  in  my  mind  would  be 

148 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

treason  to  my  country."  This  message 
came  from  a  remote  place  in  Spain,  the 
writer  having  been  compelled  to  fly  from 
France,  because  his  blood  was  German, 
while  unable  to  take  refuge  in  Germany 
because  his  heart  was  French. 

THE  PART  PLAYED  BY  THE  UNITED 
STATES 

Peehaps  the  most  tragic  of  these  vistas  of 
the  sufferings  of  great  souls  in  neutral 
countries  came  from  the  United  States. 
Profoundly  affecting  were  nearly  all  Presi- 
dent Wilson's  pubhc  utterances,  even  when, 
as  sometimes  occurred,  our  sympathy  could 
not  follow  them.  And  certainly  one  of  the 
most  vivid  of  the  flashes  as  of  lightning, 
whereby  we  have  seen  the  war  in  its  moral 
aspect,  was  that  which  showed  us  the  United 
States,  at  his  proclamation,  arresting  for  a 
whole  day,  on  October  4,  1914,  the  im- 
mense and  tumultuous  activities  of  her  vast 
continent  in  order  to  intercede  with  the 

150 


THE  DRAMA  OF  865  DAYS 

Almighty  to  vouchsafe  healing  peace  to 
His  striving  children. 

It  was  a  great  and  impressive  spectacle. 
As  I  think  of  it  I  seem  to  feel  the  quieting 
of  the  headlong  thoroughfares  of  Chicago, 
the  hushing  of  the  thud  and  drum  of  the 
overhead  railways  in  New  York,  and  then 
the  slow  ringing  of  the  bells  in  the  square 
tower  of  that  old  Puritan  Church  in  Boston 
— all  calm  and  peaceful  now  as  a  New  Eng- 
land village  on  Sunday  morning. 

But  truth  to  tell  we  of  the  belHgerent 
countries  were  not  deeply  moved  or  com- 
forted by  America's  prayers.  We  thought 
our  cause  was  that  of  himianity,  and  the 
sure  way  to  estabhsh  it  was  by  protest  as 
weU  as  prayer.  We  did  not  ask  or  desire 
that  America  should  take  up  arms  by  our 
side.  We  did  not  wish  to  enlarge  the  area 
of  the  conflict  that  was  deluging  Europe  in 
blood.  Confident  in  the  justice  of  our  cause, 
we  thought  we  knew  that  by  the  help  of 
the  Lord  of  Hosts,  and  by  the  strength  of 

151 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

His  stretched-out  arm,  the  forces  of  the 
Allies  would  be  sufficient  for  themselves. 
Neither  did  we  wish  to  make  a  parade  of 
our  wounds  to  excite  America's  pity.  With 
all  our  souls  we  beheved  that  for  every  drop 
of  innocent  blood  that  was  being  shed  out- 
side the  recognized  area  of  battle  the 
Avenger  of  blood  would  yet  exact  an  awful 
penalty.  But  when  humanity  was  being 
openly  outraged,  and  conventions  to  which 
America  had  set  her  seal  were  being  fla- 
grantly violated,  we  thought,  with  Mr. 
Roosevelt,  that  it  was  the  duty  of  the 
United  States,  as  a  Christian  country,  to 
step  in  with  the  expression  of  her  deep  and 
just  indignation. 

America  was  long  in  doing  that.  But, 
thank  God,  she  did  it  at  last,  and  for  the 
courage  and  strength  of  the  Notes  which 
President  Wilson  (speaking  with  a  voice 
that  is  no  unworthy  echo  of  the  great  one 
that  spoke  at  Gettysburg)  has  lately  sent  to 
Germany  on  the  sinking  of  the  Jbimiania, 
lfi2 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

and  the  outrage  thereby  committed  on  the 
laws  of  justice  and  humanity,  which  are 
immutable,  the  whole  civilized  world  (out- 
side the  countries  of  our  enemies)  now 
salutes  the  United  States  in  respect  and 
reverence. 

THE  THUNDERCLAP  THAT  FELL  ON 
ENGLAND 

Among  the  flashes  as  of  lightning  that 
revealed  to  us  the  drama  of  the  past  365 
days,  some  of  the  most  vivid  were  those  that 
lit  up  the  condition  at  home  towards  the 
end  of  Spring.  The  war  had  been  going 
on  ten  months  when  it  fell  on  our  ears  like 
a  thunderclap  that  all  was  not  well  with  us 
in  England.  In  the  ominous  unrest  that 
followed  there  was  danger  of  serious  divi- 
sion, with  the  risk  of  a  breakdown  in  that 
national  unity  without  which  there  could 
be  no  true  strength.  The  result  was  a 
Coahtion  Government,  uniting  all  the 
parties  save  one,  followed  by  an  appeal  to 
153 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

the  patriotism  of  the  people  through  their 
purse. 

Never  before  had  Great  Britain  wit- 
nessed such  a  response  to  her  call.  The 
first  Cabinet  in  England  that  aimed  at  coa- 
lition had  broken  down  in  personal  corrup- 
tion, but  the  Cabinet  now  called  into  being 
was  beyond  the  suspicion  of  even  party  in- 
terest. The  first  appeal  to  the  purse  of 
the  British  people  had  yielded  one  hundred 
and  thirty  millions  in  a  year,  but  the  appeal 
now  made  yielded  six  hundred  milhons  in 
a  month.  It  was  almost  as  if  Great  Britain 
had  ceased  to  be  a  nation  and  become  a 
family. 

GREAT  SCENES  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN 

NoE  did  the  industries  of  the  country,  in 
spite  of  the  lure  of  drink  and  the  tempta- 
tion to  strikes,  fall  behind  the  spirit  of  the 
people.  At  the  darkest  moment  of  our  in- 
quietude the  call  of  health  took  me  for  a 
tour  in  a  motor-car  over  fifteen  hundred 
154 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

miles  of  England,  and  though  my  jom'ney 
lay  through  three  or  four  of  the  least  in- 
dustrial and  most  placid  of  our  counties, 
I  found  evidences  of  effort  on  every  hand. 
The  high  roads  were  the  track  of  marching 
armies  of  men  in  training;  the  broad  moors 
were  armed  camps ;  the  httle  towns  were  re- 
cruiting stations  or  depots  for  wagons  of 
war;  the  land  lay  empty  of  workers  with 
the  hay  crop  still  standing  for  want  of  hands 
to  cut  it,  and  the  villages  seemed  to  be 
deserted  save  by  little  children  and  the 
feeble,  old  men,  who  had  nothing  left  to  do 
but  to  wait  for  death. 

The  voice  of  the  great  war  had  been 
heard  everywhere.  From  the  remote  ham- 
let of  Clovelly  the  young  men  of  the  Hfe- 
boat  crew  had  left  for  the  front,  and  if  the 
call  of  the  sea  came  now  it  would  have  to  be 
answered  by  sailors  over  sixty.  In  Barn- 
staple two  large  boardings  on  the  face  of 
a  public  building  recorded  in  golden  letters 
the  names  of  the  townsmen  who  had  joined 
155 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

the  colours.  In  every  little  shop  window 
along  the  high  road  to  Bath  there  were  por- 
traits of  the  King,  Kitchener,  Jellicoe, 
French,  and  Joifre,  flanked  sometimes  by 
pictures  of  poor,  burnt  and  blackened 
Belgium. 

On  the  edge  of  Dartmoor,  in  Drake's  old 
town,  Tavistock,  I  saw  a  thrilling  sight — 
thrilling  yet  simple  and  quite  familiar. 
Eight  hundred  men  were  leaving  for 
France.  In  the  cool  of  the  evening  they 
drew  up  with  their  band,  four  square  in  the 
market-place  under  the  grey  walls  of  the 
parish  church,  a  thousand  years  old.  The 
men  of  a  regiment  remaining  behind  had 
come  to  see  their  comrades  off,  bringing 
their  own  band  with  them.  For  a  short 
half -hour  the  two  bands  played  alternately, 
"  Tipperary,"  "  Fall  In,"  "  We  Don't  want 
to  Lose  You,"  and  all  the  other  homely  but 
stirring  ditties  with  which  Tommy  has 
cheered  his  soul.  The  open  windows  round 
the  square  were  full  of  faces,  the  balconies 
lfi6 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

were  crowded,  and  some  of  the  townspeople 
were  perched  on  the  housetops.  Suddenly 
the  church  clock  struck  eight,  the  hour  for 
departure;  a  bugle  sounded;  a  loud  voice 
gave  the  word  of  command  like  a  shot  out 
of  a  musket;  it  was  repeated  by  a  score  of 
other  sharp  voices  running  down  the  line, 
and  then  the  two  bands,  and  the  men,  and 
all  the  people  in  the  windows,  on  the  bal- 
conies and  on  the  roofs  (except  such  of  us 
as  had  choking  throats)  played  and  sang 
"  For  Auld  Lang  Syne."  Was  the  spirit 
of  our  mighty  old  Drake  in  his  Tavistock 
town  that  day? 

"  Come  on,  gentlemen,  there's  time  to 
finish  the  game,  and  beat  the  Spaniards, 
too!" 

A  GLIMPSE  OF  THE  KING'S  SON 

One  glimpse  at  the  end  of  my  little  motor 
tour  seemed  to  send  a  flash  of  light  through 
the  drama  of  the  past  365  days.  It  was  of 
our  young  Prince  of  Wales,  home  for  a 

167 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

short  holiday  from  the  front.  I  had  seen 
the  King's  son  only  once  before — at  his  in- 
vestiture in  Carnarvon  Castle.  How  long 
ago  that  seemed  I  In  actual  truth  "  no  hu- 
man creature  dreamt  of  war"  that  day, 
although  the  shadow  of  it  was  even  then 
hanging  over  our  heads. 

Some  of  us  who  have  witnessed  most 
of  the  great  pageants  of  the  world  thought 
we  had  never  seen  the  Hke  of  that  spec- 
tacle— the  grey  old  ruins,  roofless  and 
partly  clothed  by  Hchen  and  moss,  the  vast 
multitude  of  spectators,  the  brilliant  sun- 
shine, the  booming  of  the  guns  from  the 
warships  in  the  bay  outside,  the  screaming 
of  the  seagulls  overhead,  the  massed  Welsh 
choirs  singing  "  Land  of  my  Fathers,"  and, 
above  all,  the  boy  of  eighteen,  beautiful  as  a 
fairy  prince  in  his  blue  costume,  walking 
hand  in  hand  between  the  King  and  Queen 
to  be  presented  to  his  people  at  the  castle 
gate. 

And  now  he  was  home  for  a  httle  while 
from  that  blackened  waste  across  the  sea, 
US 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

which  had  been  trodden  into  desolation 
under  the  heel  of  a  ruthless  aggressor  and 
was  still  shrieking  as  with  the  screams  of 
hell.  He  had  gone  there  willingly,  eagerly, 
enthusiastically,  doing  the  work  and  shar- 
ing the  risk  of  every  other  soldier  of  the 
King,  and  he  would  go  back,  in  another 
few  days,  although  he  had  more  to  lose  by 
going  than  any  other  young  man  on  the 
battle-front — a  throne. 

But  if  he  Hves  to  ascend  it  he  will  have 
his  reward.    England  will  not  forget. 

When  we  hear  people  say  that  Great 

Britain  is  not  yet  awake  to  the  fact  that  she 

is  at  war  I  wonder  where  they  keep  their 

eyes.    If  I  had  been  a  Rip  Van  Winkle, 

suddenly  awakened  after  twenty  years  of 

sleep,  or  yet  an  inhabitant  of  Mars  dropped 

down  on  our  part  of  this  planet,  I  think  I 

should  have  known  in  any  five  minutes  of 

any  day  since  August  5,  1914,  that  Great 

Britain  was  at  war.    Such  a  spirit  has  never 

breathed  through  our  Empire  during  my 
168 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

time,  or  yet  through  any  other  empire  of 
which  I  have  any  knowledge.  Everybody, 
or  ahnost  everybody,  doing  something  for 
England,  and  few  or  none  idle  who  are  of 
military  age  except  such  as  have  heavy 
burdens  or  secret  disabilities  into  which  I 
dare  not  pry. 

It  is  not  alone  in  Flanders  or  on  the 
North  Sea  that  our  country's  battle  is  being 
fought,  and  when  I  think  I  hear  the  ham- 
mering on  ten  thousand  anvils  in  the  forges 
of  Woolwich,  Newcastle,  and  Glasgow,  and 
the  thud  of  picks  in  the  coal  and  iron  mines 
of  Cardiff,  Wigan,  and  Cleator  Moor, 
where  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  are 
working  long  shifts  day  and  night,  half- 
naked  under  the  fierce  heat  of  furnaces, 
sometimes  half  choked  by  the  escaping 
fumes  of  jfire-damp,  I  tell  myself  it  is  not 
for  me,  too  old  for  active  service  and  only 
able  to  use  a  pen,  to  dishonour  England, 
and  her  Empire,  in  the  presence  of  her 
Allies,  or  weaken  her  in  the  face  of  her 

160 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

enemies,  by  one  word  of  complaint  against 
the  young  manhood  of  my  country. 

THE  PART  PLAYED  BY  WOMAN 

The  latest  and  perhaps  the  most  vivid  of 
the  flashes  as  of  lightning  which  have  re- 
vealed the  drama  of  the  past  365  days  has 
shown  us  the  part  played  by  woman.  What 
a  part  that  has  been!  Nearly  always  in  the 
histories  of  the  great  world- wars  of  the  past 
the  sympathy  of  the  spectator  has  been 
more  or  less  diverted  from  the  unrecorded 
martyrdom  of  the  myriads  of  forgotten 
women  who  have  lost  sons  and  husbands  by 
the  machinations  of  the  few  vain  and  selfish 
women  who  have  governed  continents  by 
playing  upon  the  passions  of  men.  Thank 
God,  there  has  been  nothing  of  that  kind 
in  this  case.  On  the  contrary,  woman's 
part  in  this  red  year  of  the  war  has  been 
one  of  purity,  sacrifice,  and  imdivided 
glory. 

Towards  the  end  of  it  we  saw  a  proces- 
sion through  the  streets  of  London  of  30,- 

161 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

000  women  who  had  come  out  to  ask  for  the 
right  to  serve  the  State.  I  do  not  envy  the 
man  who,  having  eyes  to  see,  a  heart  to 
feel,  and  a  mind  to  comprehend,  was  able 
to  look  on  that  sight  unmoved.  Every  class 
of  woman  was  represented  there,  the 
gently-bom,  the  educated,  and  the  tenderly- 
nurtured,  as  well  as  the  humbly-bom,  the 
uneducated,  and  the  heavily-burdened,  the 
woman  with  the  dehcate,  spiritual  face,  as 
well  as  the  woman  with  the  face  hardened 
by  toil.  And  they  were  marching  together, 
side  by  side,  with  all  the  barriers  broken 
down.  It  was  not  so  much  a  procession 
of  British  women  as  a  demonstration  of 
British  womanhood,  and  it  seemed  to  say, 
"  We  hate  war  as  no  man  can  ever  hate  it, 
but  it  has  been  forced  upon  us  all,  so  we, 
too,  want  to  take  our  share  in  it.'* 

THE  WORD  OF  WOMAN 

But  long  before  July  17,  1915,  woman's 

part   in   this   war   began.      It   began   on 

162 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

August  5,  1914,  when  the  fiist  hundred 
thousand  of  our  voluntary  army  sprang  into 
being  as  by  a  miracle.  The  miracle  (if  I 
am  asked  to  account  for  it)  had  its  origin 
in  the  word  of  woman.  Without  that  word 
we  should  have  had  no  Kitchener's  Army, 
for  "  on  the  decision  of  the  women,  above 
everything  else,  lay  the  issues  of  the  men's 
choice."  * 

It  needs  little  imagination  to  lift,  as  it 
were,  the  roofs  off  a  hundred  homes,  and 
see  and  hear  what  was  going  on  there  in 
those  early  days  of  the  war,  after  the  clear 
call  went  out  over  England,  "  Your  King 
and  Country  need  you." 

In  the  little  house  of  a  City  clerk,  mar- 
ried only  a  year  before,  the  young  wife  is 
saying, "  Yes,  I  think  you  ought  to  go,  dear. 
It's  rather  a  pity,  so  soon  after  the  boy  was 
bom  . .  .  just  as  you  were  expecting  a  rise, 
too,  and  we  were  going  to  move  into  that 
nice  cottage  in  the  garden  suburb.     But, 

•The  Timet. 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

then,  it  will  be  all  for  the  best,  and  you 
mustn't  think  of  me." 

Or  perhaps  it  is  early  morning  in  the  flat 
of  a  young  lawyer  on  the  day  he  has  to 
leave  for  the  front.  He  is  dressed  in  his 
khaki,  and  his  wife,  who  is  busying  about 
his  breakfast,  is  rising  to  a  sublime  but 
heartbreaking  cheerfulness  for  the  last 
farewell.  "  Nearly  time  for  you  to  go, 
Robert,  if  you  are  to  get  to  the  barracks 
by  six.  .  .  .  Betty?  Oh,  no,  pity  to  waken 
her.  I'll  kiss  her  for  you  when  she  awakes 
and  say  daddy  promised  to  bring  her  a  dolly 
from  France.  .  .  .  Crying?  Of  course  notl 
Why  should  I  be  crying?  .  .  .  Good-bye 
then  I    Good-bye! ..." 

Or  perhaps  it  is  evening  in  a  great  house 
in  Belgravia,  and  Lady  Somebody  is  say- 
ing adieu  to  her  son.  How  well  she  remem- 
bers the  day  he  was  bom!  It  was  in  May. 
The  blossom  was  out  on  the  lilacs  in  the 
square,  and  all  the  windows  were  open. 
How  happy  she  had  been!  He  had  a  long 
164 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

fever,  too,  when  he  was  a  child,  and  for 
three  days  Death  had  hovered  over  their 
house.  How  she  had  prayed  that  the 
dread  shadow  would  pass  away  I  It  did, 
and  now  that  her  boy  has  grown  to  be  a 
man  he  comes  to  her  in  his  officer's  uniform 
to  say.  .  .  .  Ah,  these  partings!  They  are 
really  the  death-hours  of  their  dear  ones, 
and  the  women  know  it,  although,  like 
Andromache,  they  go  on  "  smiling  through 
their  tears." 

With  what  brave  and  silent  hearts  they 
face  the  sequel  tool  The  mother  of  Sub- 
Lieutenant  So-and-So  receives  letters  from 
him  nearly  every  other  week.  Such  cheer- 
ful little  pencil  scribblingsl  "Dearest 
Mother,  I  have  a  jolly  comfortable  dug-out 
now — three  planks  and  a  truss  of  straw, 
and  I  sleep  on  it  like  a  top."  Or,  perhaps, 
"  You  see  they  have  sent  me  back  to  the 
Base  after  six  weeks  under  fire,  and  now  I 
have  a  real,  real  room,  and  a  real,  real  bed  I" 
The  dear  old  darling!  She  puts  her  pre- 
166 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

cious  letters  on  the  mantelpiece  for  every- 
body to  see,  and  laughs  over  them  all  day 
long.  But  when  night  comes,  and  she  is 
winding  the  clock  before  going  upstairs, 
thinking  of  the  boy  who  not  so  long  ago  used 
to  sleep  on  her  knees. . . .  "Ah,  me!  " 

And  then  the  final  trial,  the  last  tragic 
test — ^the  women  are  equal  to  that  also. 
First,  the  letter  in  the  large  envelope  from 
the  War  Office:  "Dear  Madam,  the  Sec- 
retary of  State  regrets  to  inform  you  that 
Lieutenant  So-and-So  is  reported  killed  in 
action  on  .  .  .  Lord  Kitchener  begs  to 
offer  you  .  .  ."  And  then,  a  little  later, 
from  the  royal  palace:  "The  King  and 
Queen  send  you  their  most  sincere.  .  .  .** 
Oh,  if  she  could  only  go  out  to  the  place 
where  "chey  have  laid  ...  But  then  the 
Lord  will  know  where  to  find  His  Own  I 

Somebody  in  Paris  said  the  other  day, 
"  No  one  will  ever  make  our  women  cry  any 
more — after  the  war."    All  the  springs  of 
their  tears  will  be  dry. 
1«6 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

THE  NEW  SCARLET  LETTER 

It  is  brave  in  a  man  to  face  death  on  the 
battlefield,  instantaneous  death,  or,  what  is 
worse,  death  after  long  suffering,  after  ly- 
ing between  trenches,  perhaps,  on  the  "  no- 
man's  ground"  which  neither  friend  nor 
foe  can  reach,  grasping  the  earth  in  agony, 
seeing  the  dark  night  coming  on,  and  then 
dying  in  the  cold  shiver  of  the  dawn.  Yes, 
it  is  brave  in  a  man  to  face  death  like  that. 
But  perhaps  it  is  even  braver  in  a  woman 
to  face  life,  with  three  or  four  fatherless 
children  to  provide  for,  on  nothing  but  the 
charity  of  the  State.  Then  battle  is  in  the 
blood  of  man,  and  the  heroic  part  falls  to 
him  by  right,  but  it  is  not  in  the  blood  of 
woman,  who  shrinks  from  it  and  loathes  it, 
and  yet  such  is  her  nature,  the  fine  and 
subtle  mystery  of  it,  that  she  flies  to  the 
scene  of  suffering  with  a  bravery  which  far 
out-strips  that  of  the  man-at-arms. 

On  the  breasts  that  have  borne  tens  of 
167 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

thousands  of  the  sons  who  have  fallen  in 
this  war  the  Red  Cross  is  now  enshrined. 
It  is  the  new  scarlet  letter — ^the  badge  not 
of  shame,  but  glory.  And  "  through  the 
rolling  of  the  drums  "  and  the  thundering 
of  the  guns  a  voice  comes  to  us  in  this  year 
of  service  and  sacrifice  whose  message  no 
one  can  mistake.  Woman,  who  faces  death 
every  time  she  brings  a  man-child  into  the 
world,  must  henceforth  know  what  is  to  be 
done  with  him.  It  is  her  right,  her  natural 
right,  and  the  part  she  has  taken  in  this  war 
has  proved  it. 

AND  .  .  .  AFTER? 

Such  is  the  drama  of  the  war  as  I  have 
seen  it.  How  far  it  has  gone,  when  it  will 
close  and  the  curtain  fall  on  it  none  of  us 
can  say.  With  five  millions  already  dead, 
twice  as  many  wounded,  one  kingdom  in 
ruins,  another  desolate  from  disease,  the 
larger  part  of  Europe  under  arms,  civil 
life  paralysed,  social  existence  overshad- 
168 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

owed  by  a  mourning  that  enters  into  nearly 
every  household;  with  a  war  still  in  prog- 
ress compared  with  which  all  other  wars 
sink  into  insignificance;  with  a  pubhc  debt 
which  Pitt,  Fox,  and  Burke  (who  thought 
£240,000,000  frightful)  would  have  con- 
sidered certain  to  sink  the  ship  of  State; 
with  taxation  such  as  our  fathers  never  con- 
ceived possible — what  will  be  our  condition 
when  this  hideous  war  comes  to  an  end? 

It  is  dangerous  to  prophesy,  but,  as  far 
as  we  can  judge,  the  least  of  the  results 
will  be  that  we  shall  all  be  poorer;  that 
great  f  ortimes  will  have  diminished  and  vast 
enterprises  disappeared ;  that  what  remains 
of  our  savings  will  have  a  different  value; 
that  some  of  us  who  thought  we  had  earned 
our  rest  will  have  to  go  on  working;  that 
the  industrial  classes  will  have  a  time  of 
privation;  and  that  (most  touching  of  hu- 
man tragedies)  the  old  and  helpless  and 
dependent  among  the  very  poor  will  more 
than  ever  feel  themselves  to  be  in  the  way, 

169 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

filling  the  beds  and  eating  the  bread  of  the 
children. 

Yet  none  can  say.  It  is  one  of  the  par- 
adoxes of  history  that  after  the  longest  and 
most  exhausting  wars  the  accumulation  of 
the  largest  national  debts  and  the  imposi- 
tion of  the  heaviest  taxations,  nations  have 
rapidly  become  rich.  Although  1817  was 
a  time  of  extreme  distress  in  these  islands, 
England  prospered  after  the  Napoleonic 
wars.  Although  1871  was  a  time  of  fierce 
trial  in  Paris,  yet  France  recovered  her- 
self quickly  after  the  war  with  Germany. 
And  though  the  Civil  War  in  America 
left  poverty  in  its  immediate  trail,  the 
United  States  have  since  amassed  bound- 
less wealth. 

So  do  the  nations,  generation  after  gen- 
eration, renew  their  strength  even  after  the 
most  prolonged  campaigns.  But  beyond 
the  economic  loss  there  will  in  this  case  be 
the  physical  loss  of  ten  millions,  perhaps,  of 
the  young  manhood  of  Europe  dead,  and 
170 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

ten  other  millions  permanently  disabled, 
with  all  the  injury  to  the  race  thereby  re- 
sulting; and  beyond  the  physical  loss  there 
will  be  the  intellectual  loss  in  the  ruthless 
destruction  of  those  ancient  monuments 
which  had  linked  us  with  the  past ;  and  be- 
yond the  intellectual  loss  there  will  be  the 
moral  loss  in  the  uprooting  of  that  sym- 
pathy of  nation  with  nation  which  had 
seemed  to  unite  us  with  the  future.  As  a 
consequence  of  this  war  a  great  part  of 
Europe  will  be  closed  to  some  of  us  for  the 
rest  of  our  natural  lives,  and  the  world  will 
contain  more  than  a  hundred  millions  fewer 
of  our  fellow-creatures  in  whose  welfare  we 
shall  take  joy. 

WAR'S  SPIRITUAL  COMPENSATIONS 

But,  thank  God,  there  is  another  side  to 
the  picture,  both  for  young  and  old.  If  we 
are  to  be  poorer  we  shall  be  more  free.  If 
we  are  to  be  weak  and  faint  from  loss  of 
blood  we  shall  rest  at  night  without  dread 
171 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

of  that  shadow  of  the  sword  which  has  dark- 
ened the  sleep  of  humanity  for  forty  years. 
If  the  countries  of  our  enemies  are  to  be 
closed  to  some  of  us  in  the  future,  the  coun- 
tries of  our  Alhes  will  be  more  than  ever 
open;  nay,  they  will  be  almost  the  same  to 
us  as  our  own.  France  will  be  our  France, 
Italy  our  Italy,  Belgium  our  Belgium,  and 
the  next  time  I,  for  one,  sit  by  the  stove  in 
the  log  cabin  of  a  Russian  moujik  on  the 
Steppes,  I  shall  feel  as  if  I  were  in  the 
thatched  cottage  of  one  of  my  own  people 
in  our  little  island  in  the  Irish  Sea.  So 
does  blood  shed  in  a  conmion  cause  break 
down  the  barriers  of  race  and  language  and 
bind  together  the  children  of  one  Father. 
The  dead  of  our  Allies  become  our  dead, 
and  our  dead  theirs.  That  Frenchman  died 
to  save  my  son ;  therefore  he  is  my  brother, 
and  France  is  my  country.  "  One's  coun- 
try is  the  place  where  they  lie  whom  we 
loved." 

Thus  war,  brutal,  barbarous  war,  has  its 

172 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

spiritual  compensations,  and  pray  heaven 
the  present  one  may  prove  to  have  more 
than  any  other.  If  it  does  not,  something 
will  break  in  us  after  all  we  have  gone 
through.  Our  faith  in  the  invisible  powers 
to  bring  a  good  end  out  of  all  this  welter 
of  blood  and  destruction  has  become  a  re- 
ligion. It  must  not  fail  us  if  our  souls  are 
to  Hve. 

LET  US  PRAY  FOR  VICTORY 

"  It  is  good  to  pray  for  peace,  but  it  is  bet- 
ter to  pray  for  justice.  It  is  better  to  pray 
for  hberty.  It  is  better  to  pray  for  the 
triumph  of  the  right,  for  the  victory  of 
human  freedom.'*  * 

Then  let  us  pray  for  victory  over  our 
enemies,  having  no  qualms,  no  shame,  and 
no  remorse.  We  know  that  Christ  pro- 
nounced a  death  sentence  on  war,  and  that 
as  soon  as  Christianity  shall  have  estab- 
lished an  ascendancy  war  will  cease.    But 

*  New  York  Time*. 

173 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

if  anybody  tells  us  in  the  meantime  that  by 
Christ's  law  we  are  to  stand  aside  while  a 
strong  Power,  which  is  in  the  wrong,  inflicts 
frightful  cruelties  upon  a  weak  Power 
which  is  in  the  right,  let  us  answer  that  we 
simply  don't  believe  it.  If  anybody  tells  us 
that  by  Christ's  law  we  are  to  permit  our- 
selves to  be  trodden  upon  and  trampled  out 
of  being  by  an  empire  resting  on  violence, 
let  us  answer  that  we  simply  don't  believe  it. 
If  anybody  tells  us  that  by  Christ's  law  we 
are  not  to  oppose  the  gigantic  ambition  of  a 
"  War  Lord  "  who  claims  Divine  right  to 
stalk  over  Europe  in  scenes  of  blood,  ra- 
pacity, and  impurity,  let  us  answer  that  we 
simply  don't  believe  it.  If  anybody  tells 
us  that  Christ's  words,  "  Resist  not  evil," 
were  intended  to  say  that  spiritual  forces 
will  of  themselves  overcome  all  forms  of 
war  (including,  as  they  needs  must,  crime, 
disease,  and  death)  let  us  answer  that  we 
simply  don't  believe  it. 

Such  a  clumsy  and  dangerous  interpreta- 
174 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

tion  of  Christ's  doctrine  would  put  an  end 
to  government,  to  science,  and  to  literature, 
and  allow  the  worst  elements  of  human  na- 
ture to  rule  the  world.  It  would  also  put 
Christianity  on  the  scrap-heap — Christian- 
ity "with  its  benevolent  moraUty,  its  ex- 
quisite adaptation  to  the  needs  of  human 
life,  the  consolation  it  brings  to  the  house 
of  mourning  and  the  light  with  which  it 
brightens  the  mystery  of  the  grave."  * 

God  forbid  that  the  very  least  of  us 
should  say  one  word  that  would  prolong 
the  horrors  of  this  terrible  war.  But  it  is 
just  because  we  hate  war  that  at  the  end  of 
these  365  days  we  still  think  we  must  carry 
it  on.  It  is  just  because  our  hearts  are 
bleeding  from  the  sacrifices  we  have  made, 
and  have  still  to  make,  that  we  feel  they 
must  be  compelled  to  bleed. 

Let  us,  then,  pray  with  all  the  f ervoiu*  of 
our  souls  for  Belgium,  for  Poland,  for 
Italy,  for  Russia,  for  France,  but  above  all, 
for  our  own  beloved  country,  mother  of 

175 


THE  DRAMA  OF  365  DAYS 

nations,  mother,  too,  of  some  of  the  bravest 
and  best  yet  bom  on  to  the  earth,  that  as 
long  as  there  remains  one  man  or  woman 
of  British  blood  above  British  soil  this 
England  and  her  Empire  may  be  ours — 
ours  and  our  children's. 

•Macaulay. 


J.     B.     LIPPINCOTT     COMPANY'S 

New     and     Forthcoming     Books 


Peg  Along 


By  GEORGE  L.  WALTON,  M.D.  i2mo.  Cloth,  $i.oo  net 
Dr.  Waltoirs  slogan,  *' Why  Worry,"  swept  the  country. 
His  little  book  of  that  title  did  an  infinite  amount  of  good. 
"Peg  Along"  is  the  1915  slogan.  Hundredc  of  thousands 
of  fussers,  fretters,  semi-  and  would-be  invalids,  and  all 
other  halters  by  the  wayside  should  be  reached  by 
Dr.  Walton's  stirring  encouragement  to  "peg  along."  In 
this  new  book  he  shows  us  how  to  correct  our  missteps  of 
care,  anxiety,  fretting,  fear,  martyrism,  over-insistence, 
etc,  by  teaching  us  real  steps  in  the  chapters  on  work 
and  play,  managing  the  mind,  Franklin's  and  Bacon's 
methods,  etc.,  etc.  Send  copies  of  this  inspiring  little  work 
to  friends  who  appreciate  bright  wisdom.  Win  them  into 
joyful,  happy  "peggers  along"  to  health  and  happiness. 

Under  the  Red  Cross  Flag 

At  Home  and  Abroad 

By  MABEL  T.  BOARDMAN,  Chairman  of  the  National  Relief 

Board,  American    Red    Cross. 

Foreword  by  PRESIDENT  WOODROW  WILSON. 

Fully  illustrated.    Decorated  clotii.    Gilt  top.    $1.50  net. 

The  American  Red  Cross  and  the  name  of  Miss  Boardman 
have  been  inseparably  connected  for  many  years;  her  own 
story  is  one  of  fascinating  human  interest  to  all  who  feel  a 
bond  of  sympathy  with  those  who  suflFer.  To-day  it  is 
the  European  War,  but  in  unforgotten  yesterdays  there 
was  the  Philippine  Typhoon,  the  Vesuvian  Eruption,  the 
Chinese  Famine,  and  almost  countless  other  disasters 
in  which  the  heroes  and  heroines  of  the  Red  Cross  have 
worked  and  met  danger  in  their  effort  to  alleviate  the 
sufferings  of  humanity.  This  is  the  only  complete  his- 
torical work  upon  the  subject  that  has  yet  been  written; 
no  one,  accounting  experience  and  literary  ability,  is 
better  fitted  to  present  the  facts  than  is  the  author. 


Joseph  Pennell's  Pictures 
In  the  Land  of  Temples 

With  40  plates  in  photogravure  from  lithographs.  Introduction 
by  W.  H.  D.  Rouse,  LittD.  Crown  quarto.  Lithograph  on 
cover.   $1.25  net. 

Mr.  Pennell's  wonderful  drawings  present  to  us  the 
immortal  witnesses  of  the  "Glory  that  was  Greece"  just 
as  they  stand  to-day,  in  their  environment  and  the  golden 
atmosphere  of  Hellas.    Whether  it  be  the  industrial  giants 
portrayed  in  "Pictures  of  the  Panama  Canal"  or  antique 
temples  presented  in  this  fascinating  volume,  the  great 
lithographer  proves  himself  to  be  a  master  craftsman  of 
this  metier.    The  art  of  Greece  is  perhaps  dead,  but  we 
are  fortunate  in  having  such  an  interpreter.     There  is 
every  promise  that  this  book  will  have  the  same  value 
among  artists  and  book  lovers  as  had  his  others. 
"The  isles  of  Greece,  the  isles  of  Greece! 
Where  burning  Sappho  loved  and  sung," 
have  never  had  a  more  appreciative  and  sympathetic  lover. 

Christmas  Carol 

By  CHARLES  DICKENS.  13  illustrations  in  color  and  many 
in  black  and  white  by  Arthur  Rackham.  Octavo.  Decorated 
cloth.   $1.50  net. 

All  the  praise  that  can  be  showered  upon  Joseph  Pennell 
as  a  master  lithographer,  is  also  the  due  mead  of  Arthur 
Rackham  as  the  most  entrancing  and  mysterious  color 
illustrator  in  Europe.  His  work  is  followed  by  an  army 
of  picture  lovers  of  all  types  and  of  all  ages,  from  the 
children  in  the  nurseries  whose  imagination  he  stirs  with 
the  fiery-eyed  dragons  of  some  fairy  illustration,  to  the 
ambitious  artists  in  every  country  who  look  to  him  as  an 
inspiring  master. 

If  the  decision  had  been  left  to  the  book-reading  and 
picture-loving  public  as  to  the  most  eligible  story  for 
treatment,  we  believe  that  the  Christmas  Carol  would 
have  been  chosen.  The  children  must  see  old  Scrouge 
and  Tiny  Tim  as  Rackham  draws  them. 


Historic  Virginia  Homes 
and  Churches 

By  ROBERT  A.  LANCASTER,  JR.   About  300  illustrations  and 
a  photogravxire  frontispiece.    Quarto.    In  a  box,  cloth,  gilt  top, 
$7.50  net.    Half  morocco,  $12.50  net.    A  Limited  Edition  printed 
from  type,  uniform  with  the  Pennells*  "Our  Philadelphia." 
Virginians  are  justly  proud  of  the  historical  and  archi- 
tectural glories  of  the  Old  Dominion.    All  America  looks 
to  Virginia  as  a  Cradle  of  American  thought  and  culture. 
This  volume  is  a  monument  to  Virginia,  persons  and  places, 
past  and  present.    It  has  been  printed  in  a  limited  edition 
and  the  type  has  been  distributed.    This  is  not  a  volume 
of  padded  value;  it  is  not  a  piece  of  literary  hack-work. 
It  has  been  a  labor  of  love  since  first  undertaken  some 
twenty-five  years  ago.    The  State  has  done  her  part  by 
providing  the  rich  material,  the  Author  his  with  pains- 
taking care  and  loving  diligence,  and  the  Publishers  theirs 
by  expending  all  the  devices  of  the  bookmaker's  art. 

Quaint  and  Historic 
Forts  of  North  America 

By  JOHN  MARTIN  HAMMOND,  Author  of  «  Colonial  Man- 
sions of  Maryland  and  Delaware."    With  photogravure  frontis- 
piece and  sixty-five  illustrations.    Ornamental  cloth,  gilt  top, 
in  a  box.    $5.00  net. 
This  is  an  unique  volume  treating  a  phase  of  American 
history  that  has  never  before  been  presented.    Mr.  Ham- 
mond, in  his  excellent  literary  style  with  the  aid  of  a 
splendid  camera,  brings  us  on  a  journey  through  the  exist- 
ing old  forts  of  North  America  and  there  describes  their 
appearances  and  confides  in  us  their  romantic  and  historic 
interest.    We  follow  the  trail  of  the  early  English,  French 
and  Spanish  adventurers,  and  the  soldiers  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, the  War  of  18 12  and  the  later  Civil  and  Indian  Wars. 
We  cover  the  entire  country  from  Quebec  and  Nova  Scotia 
to  California  and  Florida,  with  a  side  trip  to  Havana  to 
appreciate  the  weird  romance  of  the  grim  Morro  Castle. 
Here  is  something  new  and  unique. 


The  Magic  of  Jewels  and  Charms 

By  GEORGE  FREDERICK  KUNZ,  A.M.,  PH.D.,  D.SC. 
With  numerous  plates  in  color,  doubletone  and  line.  Deco- 
rated cloth,  gilt  top,  in  a  box.  $5.00  net.  Half  morocco,  $10.00 
net.  Uniform  in  style  and  size  with  "  The  Curious  Lore  of 
Precious  Stones."    The  two  volimies  in  a  box,  $10.00  net. 

It  will  probably  be  a  new  and  surely  a  fascinating  sub- 
ject to  which  Dr.  Kunz  introduces  the  reader.  The  most 
primitive  savage  and  the  most  highly  developed  Cauca- 
sian find  mystic  meanings,  symbols,  sentiments  and,  above 
all,  beauty  in  jewels  and  precious  stones;  it  is  of  this  magic 
lore  that  the  distinguished  author  tells  us.  In  past  ages 
there  has  grown  up  a  great  literature  upon  the  subject — 
books  in  every  language  from  Icelandic  to  Siamese,  from 
Sanskrit  to  Irish — the  lore  is  as  profound  and  interesting 
as  one  can  imagine.  In  this  volume  you  will  find  the 
unique  information  relating  to  the  magical  influence  which 
precious  stones,  amulets  and  crystals  have  been  supposed 
to  exert  upon  individuals  and  events. 

The  Civilization  of  Babylonia 
and  Assyria 

By  MORRIS  JASTROW,  JR.,  PH.D.,  LL.D.  140  illustrations. 
Octavo.    Cloth,  gilt  top,  in  a  box,  $6.00  net. 

This  work  covers  the  whole  civilization  of  Babylonia 
and  Assyria,  and  by  its  treatment  of  the  various  aspects 
of  that  civilization  furnishes  a  comprehensive  and  com- 
plete survey  of  the  subject.  The  language,  history, 
religion,  commerce,  law,  art  and  literature  are  thoroughly 
presented  in  a  manner  of  deep  interest  to  the  general 
reader  and  indispensable  to  historians,  clergymen,  anthro- 
pologists and  sociologists.  The  volume  is  elaborately 
illustrated  and  the  pictures  have  been  selected  with  the 
greatest  care  so  as  to  show  every  aspect  of  this  civilization, 
which  alone  disputes  with  that  of  Egypt,  the  fame  of 
being  the  oldest  in  the  world.  For  Bible  scholars  the 
comparisons  with  Hebrew  traditions  and  records  will  have 
intense  interest. 


English  Ancestral  Homes  of 
Noted  Americans 

By  ANNE  HOLLINGSWORTH  WHARTON,  Author  of  "  In 
Chateau  Land,"  etc.,  etc.  28  illustratioiis.  i2mo.  Cloth  $2.00 
net.   Half  morocco,  $4.00  net. 

Miss  Wharton  so  enlivens  the  past  that  she  makes  the 
distinguished  characters  of  whom  she  treats  live  and  talk 
with  us.  She  has  recently  visited  the  homelands  of  a  num- 
ber of  our  great  American  leaders  and  we  seem  to  see  upon 
their  native  heath  the  English  ancestors  of  George  Wash- 
ington, Benjamin  Franklin,  William  Penn,  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers  and  Mothers,  the  Maryland  and  Virginia  Cava- 
liers and  others  who  have  done  their  part  m  the  making 
of  the  United  States.  Although  this  book  is  written  in  aa 
entertaining  manner,  and  with  many  anecdotes  and  by- 
paths to  charm  the  reader,  it  is  a  distinct  addition  to  the 
literature  of  American  history  and  will  make  a  superb  gift 
for  the  man  or  woman  who  takes  pride  in  his  or  her  library. 

Heroes  and  Heroines  of  Fiction 

Classical,  Mediaeval  and  Legendary 

By  WILLIAM  S.  "WALSH.  Half  morocco.  Reference  Library 
s^le,  $3.00  net.  Uniform  with  "  Heroes  and  Heroines  of  Fic- 
tion, Modem  Prose  and  Poetry."  The  two  volumes  in  a  box, 
$6.00  net. 

The  fact  that  the  educated  men  of  to-day  are  not  as 
familiar  with  the  Greek  and  Romai  classics  as  were  their 
fathers  gives  added  value  to  Mr.  Walsh's  fascinating  com- 
pilation. He  gives  the  nime  and  cetting  of  all  the  any- 
wise important  characters  in  the  literature  of  classical, 
mediaeval  and  legendary  times.  To  one  who  is  accustomed 
to  read  at  all  widely,  it  will  be  found  of  the  greatest  assist- 
ance and  benefit;  to  one  who  writes  it  will  be  invaluable. 
These  books  comprise  a  complete  encyclopedia  of  inter- 
esting, valuable  and  curious  facts  regarding  all  the  char- 
acters of  any  note  whatever  in  literature.  This  is  the 
latest  -addition  to  the  world-famous  Lippincott's  Readers' 
Reference  Library.  Each  volume,  as  published,  has  be- 
come a  standard  part  of  public  and  private  libraries^ 


A  Wonderful  Story  of  Heroism 

The  Home  of  the  Blizzard 

By  SIR  DOUGLAS  MAWSON.  Two  volumes.  315  remark- 
able photographs.  16  colored  plates,  drawings,  plans,  maps,  etc 
8vo.   $9.00  net. 

Have  you  heard  Sir  Douglas  lecture.''  If  you  have,  you 
will  want  to  read  this  book  that  you  may  become  better 
acquainted  with  his  charming  personality,  and  to  preserve 
in  the  three  hundred  and  fifteen  superb  illustrations  with 
the  glittering  text,  a  permanent  record  of  the  greatest 
battle  that  has  ever  been  waged  against  the  wind,  the 
snow,  the  crevice  ice  and  the  prolonged  darkness  of  over 
two  years  in  Antarctic  lands. 

It  has  been  estimated  by  critics  as  the  most  interesting 
and  the  greatest  account  of  Polar  Exploration.  For  in- 
stance, the  London  Athenaeum,  an  authority,  said:  "No 
polar  book  ever  written  has  surpassed  these  volumes  in 
sustained  interest  or  in  the  variety  of  the  subject  matter." 
It  is  indeed  a  tale  of  pluck,  heroism  and  infinite  endurance 
that  comes  as  a  relief  in  the  face  of  accounts  of  the  same 
qualities  sacrificed  in  Europe  for  a  cause  so  less  worthy. 

To  understand  "courage"  you  must  read  the  author's 
account  of  his  terrific  struggle  alone  in  the  blizzard, — an 
eighty-mile  fight  in  a  hurricane  snow  with  his  two  com- 
panions left  dead  behind  him. 

The  wild  life  in  the  southern  seas  is  multitudinous;  whole 
armies  of  dignified  penguins  were  caught  with  the  camera; 
bluff  old  sea-lions  and  many  a  strange  bird  of  this  new 
continent  were  so  tame  that  they  could  be  easily  ap- 
proached. For  the  first  time  actual  colored  photographs 
bring  to  us  the  flaming  lights  of  the  untrodden  land.  They 
are  unsurpassed  in  any  other  work. 

These  volumes  will  be  a  great  addition  to  your  library; 
whether  large  or  small,  literary  or  scientific,  they  are  an 
inspiration,  a  delight  to  read. 


Heart's  Content 

By  RALPH  HENRY  BARBOUR.  Illustrations  in  color  by 
H.  Weston  Taylor.  Page  Decorations  by  Edward  Stratton  Hollo- 
way.    Handsome  cloth  binding.     In  sealed  packet.    $1.50  net. 

This  is  the  tale  of  a  summer  love  affair  carried  on  by  an 
unusual  but  altogether  bewitching  lover  in  a  small  summer 
resort  in  New  England.  Allan  Shortland,  a  gentleman, 
a  tramp,  a  poet,  and  withal  the  happiest  of  happy  men, 
is  the  hero;  Beryl  Vernon,  as  pretty  as  the  ripple  of  her 
name,  is  the  heroine.  Two  more  appealing  personalities 
are  seldom  found  within  the  covers  of  a  book.  Fun  and 
plenty  of  it,  romance  and  plenty  of  it, — and  an  end  full 
of  happiness  for  the  characters,  and  to  the  reader  regret 
that  the  story  is  over.  The  illustrations  by  H.  Weston 
Taylor,  the  decorations  by  Edward  Stratton  Holloway  and 
the  tasteful  sealed  package  are  exquisite. 

A  New  Volume  m  THE  STORIES 
ALL  CHILDREN  LOVE  SERIES 


Heidi 


By  JOHANNA  SPYRI.  Translated  by  ELISABETH  P. 
STORK.  Introduction  by  Charles  Wharton  Stork.  With  eight 
illustrations  in  color  by  Maria  L.  Kirk.    8vo.    $1.25  net. 

This  is  the  latest  addition  to  the  Stories  All  Children 
Love  Series.  The  translation  of  the  classic  story  has 
been  accomplished  in  a  marvellously  simple  and  direct 
fashion, — it  is  a  high  example  of  the  translator's  art. 
American  children  should  be  as  familiar  with  it  as  they 
are  with  "Swiss  Family  Robinson,"  and  we  feel  certain 
that  on  Christmas  Day  joy  will  be  brought  to  the 
nurseries  in  which  this  book  is  a  present.  The  illustra- 
tions by  Maria  L.  Kirk  are  of  the  highest  calibre, — the 
color,  freshness  and  fantastic  airiness  present  just  the 
spark  to  kindle  the  imagination  of  the  little  tots. 


HEWLETT S  GREATEST  WORK: 

Romance^  Satire  and  a  German 

The  Little  Iliad 

By  MAURICE  HEWLETT.    Colored  frontispiece  by  Edward 
Bume- Jones.    i2mo.    $1.35  net. 

A  "Hewlett"  that  you  and  every  one  else  will  enjoy! 
It  combines  the  rich  romance  of  his  earliest  work  with  the 
humor,  freshness  and  gentle  satire  of  his  more  recent. 

The  whimsical,  delightful  novelist  has  dipped  his  pen 
in  the  inkhorn  of  modern  matrimonial  difficulties  and 
brings  it  out  dripping  with  amiable  humor,  delicious  but 
fantastic  conjecture.  Helen  of  Troy  lives  again  in  the 
Twentieth  Century,  but  now  of  Austria;  beautiful,  be- 
witching, love-compelling,  and  with  it  all  married  to  a 
ferocious  German  who  has  drained  the  cup  and  is  now 
squeezing  the  dregs  of  all  that  life  has  to  offer.  He  has 
locomotor  ataxia  but  that  does  not  prevent  his  Neitschean 
will  from  dominating  all  about  him,  nor  does  it  prevent 
Maurice  Hewlett  from  making  him  one  of  the  most  inter- 
esting and  portentous  characters  portrayed  by  the  hand 
of  an  Englishman  in  many  a  day.  Four  brothers  fall  in 
love  with  the  fair  lady, — there  are  amazing  but  happy 
consequences.  The  author  has  treated  an  involved  story 
in  a  delightful,  naive  and  refreshing  manner. 

The  Sea- Hawk 

By  RAPHAEL  SABATINI.    i2mo.    Cloth.    $1.25  net. 

Sabatini  has  startled  the  reading  public  with  this  mag- 
nificent romance!  It  is  a  thrilling  treat  to  find  a  vivid, 
clean-cut  adventure  yarn.  Sincere  in  this,  we  beg  you, 
brothers,  fathers,  husbands  and  comfortable  old  bachelors, 
to  read  this  tale  and  even  to  hand  it  on  to  your  friends  of 
the  fairer  sex,  provided  you  are  certain  that  they  do  not 
mind  the  glint  of  steel  and  the  shrieks  of  dying  captives. 


The  Man  From  the 
Bitter  Roots 

ByCAROLESTE  LOCKHART.    3  illustrations  in  color  by  Gayle 
Hoskins.    i2mo.    $1.25  net. 

"Better  than  *Me-Smith"' — that  is  the  word  of  those 
who  have  read  this  story  of  the  powerful,  quiet,  competent 
Bruce  Burt.  You  recall  the  humor  of  *'Me-Smith," — 
wait  until  you  read  the  wise  sayings  of  Uncle  Billy  and 
the  weird  characters  of  the  Hinds  Hotel.  You  recall  some 
of  those  flashing  scenes  of  "Me-Smith" — wait  until  you 
read  of  the  blizzard  in  the  Bitter  Roots,  of  Bruce  Burt 
throwing  the  Mexican  wrestling  champion,  of  the  reckless 
feat  of  shooting  the  Roaring  River  with  the  dynamos  upon 
the  rafts,  of  the  day  when  Bruce  Burt  almost  killed  a  man 
who  tried  to  burn  out  his  power  plant, — then  you  will 
know  what  hair-raising  adventures  really  are.  The  tale 
is  dramatic  from  the  first  great  scene  in  that  log  cabin 
in  the  mountains  when  Bruce  Burt  meets  the  murderous 
onslaught  of  his  insane  partner. 

A  Man's  Hearth 

By  ELEANOR  M.  INGRAM.    Illustrated  in  color  by  Edmund 
Frederick.    i2mo.    $1.25  net. 

The  key  words  to  all  Miss  Ingram's  stories  are  "fresh- 
ness," "speed"  and  "vigor."  "From  the  Car  Behind" 
was  aptly  termed  "one  continuous  joy  ride."  "A  Man's 
Hearth"  has  all  the  vigor  and  go  of  the  former  story  and 
also  a  heart  interest  that  gives  a  wider  appeal.  A  young 
New  York  millionaire,  at  odds  with  his  family,  finds  his 
solution  in  working  for  and  loving  the  optimistic  nurse- 
maid who  brought  him  from  the  depths  of  trouble  and 
made  for  him  a  hearthstone.  There  are  fascinating  side 
issues  but  this  is  the  essential  story  and  it  is  an  inspiring 
one.    It  will  be  one  of  the  big  books  of  the  winter. 


By  the  author  of  '' MARCIA  SCHUYLER'' 
*'LOf  MICHAEL''  ''THE  BEST  MAN"  etc. 

The  Obsession  of  Victoria  Gracen 

By  GRACE  LIVINGSTON  HILL  LUTZ.    lUustrated  in  color. 
i2mo.    $1.25  net. 

Every  mother,  every  church-worker,  every  individual 
who  desires  to  bring  added  happiness  into  the  lives  of 
others  should  read  this  book.  A  new  novel  by  the  author 
of  "Marcia  Schuyler"  is  always  a  treat  for  those  of  us 
who  want  clean,  cheerful,  uplifting  fiction  of  the  sort  that 
you  can  read  with  pleasure,  recommend  with  sincerity  and 
remember  with  thankfulness.  This  book  has  the  exact 
touch  desired.  The  story  is  of  the  effect  that  an  orphan 
boy  has  upon  his  lonely  aunt,  his  Aunt  Vic.  Her  obsession 
is  her  love  for  the  lad  and  his  happiness.  There  is  the 
never-failing  fund  of  fun  and  optimism  with  the  high 
religious  purpose  that  appears  in  all  of  Mrs.  Lutz's  excel- 
lent stories. 


Miranda 


By  GRACE  LIVINGSTON  HILL  LUTZ.    lUustrated  in  color 
by  E.  L.  Henry.    i2nio.    $1.25  net. 

Nearly  all  of  us  fell  in  love  with  Miranda  when  she  first 
appeared  in  "Marcia  Schuyler,"  but  those  who  missed 
that  happiness  will  now  find  her  even  more  lovable  in 
this  new  book  of  which  she  is  the  central  figure.  From 
cover  to  cover  it  is  a  tale  of  optimism,  of  courage,  of 
purpose.  You  lay  it  down  with  a  revivified  spirit,  a 
stronger  heart  for  the  struggle  of  this  world,  a  clearer 
hope  for  the  next,  and  a  determination  to  make  yourself 
and  the  people  with  whom  you  come  in  contact  cleaner, 
more  spiritual,  more  reverent  than  ever  before.  It  is 
deeply  religious  in  character:  a  novel  that  will  bring  the 
great  spiritual  truths  of  God,  character  and  attainment 
straight  to  the  heart  of  every  reader. 


''GRIPPING''  DETECTIVE  TALES 

The  White  Alley 

By  CAROLYN  WELLS.    Frontispiece,    izmo.    $1.25  net. 

FLEMING  STONE,  the  ingenious  American  deteptive, 
has  become  one  of  the  best  known  characters  in  modern 
fiction.  He  is  the  supreme  wizard  of  crime  detection  in 
the  WHITE  BIRCHES  MYSTERY  told  in— "THE 
WHITE  ALLEY." 

The  Boston  Transcript  says:  "As  an  incomparable 
solver  of  criminal  enigmas,  Stone  is  in  a  class  by  himself. 
A  tale  which  will  grip  the  attention."  This  is  what 
another  says : — "  Miss  Wells's  suave  and  polished  detective, 
Fleming  Stone,  goes  through  the  task  set  for  him  with 
celerity  and  dispatch.  Miss  Wells's  characteristic  humor 
and  cleverness  mark  the  conversations." — New  York  Times, 

The  Woman  in  the  Car 

By  RICHARD  MARSH,    izmo.    $1.35  net 

Do  you  like  a  thrilling  tale?  If  so,  read  this  one  and 
we  almost  guarantee  that  you  will  not  stir  from  your  chair 
until  you  turn  the  last  page.  As  the  clock  struck  midnight 
on  one  of  the  most  fashionable  streets  of  London  in  the 
Duchess  of  Ditchling's  handsome  limousine,  ArthurTowzer, 
millionaire  mining  magnate,  is  found  dead  at  the  wheel, 
horribly  mangled.  Yes,  this  is  a  tale  during  the  reading 
of  which  you  will  leave  your  chair  only  to  turn  up  the 
gas.  When  you  are  not  shuddering,  you  are  thinking; 
your  wits  are  balanced  against  the  mind  and  system  of 
the  famous  Scotlan4  Yard,  the  London  detective  head- 
quarters. The  men  or  women  who  can  solve  the  mystery 
without  reading  the  last  few  pages  will  deserve  a  reward, — 
they  should  apply  for  a  position  upon  the  Pinkerton  force. 


THE  NOVEL   THEY'RE  ALL   TALKING  ABOUT 

TheRose-Garden  Husband 

By  MARGARET  WIDDEMER.     Illustrated  by  Walter  Biggs. 
Small  i2mo.    $i.oo  net. 

"A  Benevolent  Friend  just  saved  me  from  missing  'The 
Rose-Garden  Husband.'  It  is  something  for  thanks- 
giving, so  I  send  thanks  to  you  and  the  author.  The 
story  is  now  cut  out  and  stitched  and  in  my  collection 
of  '  worth-while '  stories,  in  a  portfolio  that  holds  only 
the  choicest  stories  from  many  magazines.  There  is  a 
healthy  tone  in  this  that  puts  it  above  most  of  these 
choice  ones.  And  a  smoothness  of  action,  a  reality  of 
motive  and  speech,  that  comforts  the  soul  of  a  veteran 
reviewer."  From  a  Letter  to  the  Publishers. 

Edition  after  edition  of  this  novel  has  been  sold,  surely 
you  are  not  going  to  miss  it.  It  is  going  the  circle  of  family 
after  family, — every  one  likes  it.  The  New  York  Times, 
a  paper  that  knows,  calls  it  "a  sparkling,  rippling  little 
tale."    Order  it  now^ — the  cost  is  but  one  dollar. 

The  Diary  of  a  Beauty 

By  MOLLY  ELLIOT  SEAWELL.   Illustrated  by  William  Dorr 
Steele.    i2mo.   $1.25  net. 

From  the  assistant  postmistress  in  a  small  New  England 
village  to  the  owner  of  a  great  mansion  on  Fifth  Avenue 
is  the  story  told  not  as  outsiders  saw  it,  but  as  the  beau- 
tiful heroine  experiences  it, — an  account  so  naive,  so 
deliciously  cunning,  so  true,  that  the  reader  turns  page 
after  page  with  an  inner  feeling  of  absolute  satisfaction. 

The  Dusty  Road 

By  THERESE  TYLER.    Frontispiece  by  H.  Weston  Taylcr. 
i2mo.    $1.25  net. 

This  is  a  remarkable  story  of  depth  and  power, — the 
struggle  of  Elizabeth  Anderson  to  clear  herself  of  her 
sordid  surroundings.  Such  books  are  not  written  every 
day,  nor  every  year,  nor  every  ten  years.  It  is  stimulating 
to  a  higher,  truer  life. 


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Architecture 

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Our  Philadelphia 

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TT    •  j«     By  JOHANNA  SPYRI. 
rleiQl    Translated  by  EUsabeth  P.  Stork. 

The  Cuckoo  Clock  By  mrs.  molesworth. 
The  Swiss  Family  Robinson  g.  e.*"mitton. 
The  Princess  and  the  Goblin  ma(?donald. 

— ii  T»    •  J    r>         J  •        By   GEORGE 

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Bimbi    By"ouroA.»' 

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The  Chronicles  of  Fairyland  ByPERGus  hume. 

Hans  Andersen's  Fairy  Tales 

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